As in the Portrait of a Scholar by Chae Yongsin (2012.329), the
subject here—a young woman wearing a traditional Korean dress
(hanbok) comprising a short jacket over a floor-length
skirt—appears in front of a folding screen atop a patterned
straw mat, though she sits on a chair in three-quarter view.
Floral motifs abound, highlighting the decorative quality of the
painting: flanked by potted plants and a vase with floral
decoration, the sitter holds a spray of peonies; the blue
tablecloth is dotted with small flowers; and the background
screen, faintly painted in monochrome ink, shows flowering trees
rather than a landscape, the more standard backdrop for
portraits of this time. Curiously, greater care and visual
emphasis have been placed on the setting and objects—note, for
example, the gold-painted planter—than on the sitter.There are
very few extant portraits of women in Korean painting prior to
the twentieth century. The Confucian belief in strict separation
of the sexes and in female modesty deemed inapp