Abstract

Gweon Seob, sobriquet Okso, active in the early 18th period, Joseon, was an art dilettante. Though not being professional, he enjoyed appreciating paintings and writing critical scripts on art works, on the basis of his vast information on them. His taste for art is shown in his manuscript entitled Okso-go(玉所稿, Manuscripts by Okso; Gweon Seob). Its is significant that the writings by Gweon Seob manifest the artistic and cultual ambience of the 18th century as reflected in paintings. Critiques by Gweon Seob were mainly written in poetic style and contain amateurish analysis on paintings, however, many of them show his in-depth affection toward art as a serious amateur. On landscape painting, he most loved true-view landscape paintings by Jeong Seon (鄭敾), who occupied a key place in Korean landscape painting by first describing actual sceneries through the countries. Gweon Seob's colleagues include scholar-officials and middle-people. His grandson, Gweon Shin-eung (權信應) helped to encourage Gweon Seob's amateurish taste by copying an original version, and that made him enjoy many pieces of works. Gweon Seob's artistic taste can be characterized by the unity of the following three aspects: journey for beautiful sceneries, appreciation of landscape painting, and creation of poetry. Traveling famous places gave him an opportunity to understand landscape painting, and to express his feelings by reciting poems. All of them were influenced by true-view poetry and Jeong Seon's individual style at that time. In his late years when his visit to famous places was almost impossible, he left album of painting depicting sceneries seen in his sleeping, Mong hwa-cheop(夢畵帖, Album of Painting Dream Journey). His critiques and poems of painting show that the non-professionals on art were emerging as main dilettante circles and such ambience was gradually spread in the 18th century.