[KS] Kim and Washington

[Frank Hoffmann]

Dear George (and All):

Which of the Hicks paintings is this, the one you 
posted? (The George Washington one I mean?) 
...See an assembly of Hicks' various versions at 
the END of this message.

"Washington, Crossing the Delaware" and 
"Washington Passing the Delaware" were extremely 
popular themes at the time, and until the late 
19th century. There are many hundreds or 
thousands of paintings, engravings, etchings, and 
prints with that as a subject matter. Are you 
referring to the subject matter or that 
particular painting? The de Young Museum with its 
amazing collection of 19th century American art 
(recently rebuild as an upside-down trash can, a 
charming piece of postmodern architecture) is 
five minutes from where my wife and I live. And 
if we'd stroll over there for a Sunday afternoon 
visit, we would probably bump into a couple of 
those, eyes closed. The painting you posted is 
one of the better known ones of those "Washington 
Crossing the Delaware" ones, by painter Edward 
Hicks (1870-1849), a Quaker minister and folk 
painter from Pennsylvania. But which version? Not 
that it is important ... well, then again, the 
fact that there are numerous versions IS 
important in the context you presented it to us!

The more famous ones of these paintings were then 
copied into other media by less famous artists. 
There was a whole industry there to reproduce 
such works. See FOR EXAMPLE George S. Lang's 
"Washington Passing the Delaware":
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/wash/aa_wash_soldier_2_e.html
   --> Washington passing the Delaware, evening previous
   to the Battle of Trenton, Dec. 25th, 1776
You can buy that George S. Lang version as a reproduction at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Washington-passing-Delaware-Reprint-measured/dp/B001FYR78I
They probably have the Kim & Kim portrait as 
well, if you rather go for that one, maybe even 
for Kindle.

Like all 19th century American painters, his 
style closely resembles British late 18th and 
19th century academic painting (that of some 
other painters more resembles French 
painting--many of the painters of the times were 
first generation immigrants anyway--such as 
Hubert Vos, whose portrait of King Kojong you 
will have seen). Pretty much all of the 
seascapes, for example, that you see in the de 
Young, look all very British (I would probably 
not know they aren't without the identifying 
labels).

The Hicks piece you posted--and all others by 
Hicks--are interesting because they show some 
American local identity (vs. their British and 
French prototypes), if you want to call it that. 
In spite of the European stylistic adaptations 
(e.g. of Napoleon in battle depictions), this is 
after all "folk art," this is done by some local 
minister, not by court artist or professional 
artist. Here is a nice large online image of 
Hick's 1849 version at the Chrysler Museum of Art:
http://www.chrysler.org/education/unit1/hicks2.htm
Larger image:
http://www.chrysler.org/education/unit1/unit1_images/hicks_washington.77.1271.jpg
The way Hicks uses colors and many other details 
(e.g. the depiction of the horse movements and 
how he deals with large spaces like the sky etc.) 
shows that he was not a trained academic artist.

What is so interesting is that you are comparing 
THIS (that is, one of Hicks' versions of 
"Washington Passing the Delaware" paintings) to 
the North Korean Kim & wife & little Kim 
painting. That really totally got me! There are 
countless 18th and 19th century 'emperor on 
horseback' paintings, with brown and white horses 
from Europe and the U.S. Why this painting? There 
is not even any "son" there, and certainly not 
his wife (as in the Kim & Kim painting). It is 
not a battle either; it is the "three generals'" 
happy family outing at their very own private 
revolutionary site (Paektu-san). The oil 
painting's title is "Sunrise at Paektu" (painter 
Ch'oe Ha-t'aek; published in Chosôn misul 
nyôn'gam 1991, p. 70; your posted version cuts 
about 1/4 from the right and from the left). In 
the Hicks painting there is no visual union of 
father and son, as in the painting by 
Ch'oe--father is riding while son points. Rather, 
in Hicks shows some officer or general pointing, 
but he is riding another horse. There is no 
family there. And in a European or American 
battle depiction one would not exactly expect 
that. I think the reason you feel that these two 
paintings can be compared, please correct me if I 
am wrong, is mostly because of the use of colors 
and the simplified formal rendering of space: 
American folk painting is the keyword here. 
Although one and a half centuries apart from the 
North Korean painting, it seems to resemble how 
the North Korean painter used colors and how he 
dealt with space and backgrounds (or the other 
way around). It is the 'folky' part that you 
point to. And as such you are basically making 
Ch'oe Ha-t'aek a great compliment, as this is 
exactly the effect he wanted to create here.

Looking at North Korean oil paintings from the 
1945-1950 period you will find that painters 
simply continued their colonial-period styles. 
And there are plenty of wonderful examples there 
(e.g. Yi K'wae-dae, 1913-1965) how European 19th 
century academic styles lived on, with a red flag 
here and there. But not in 1991, in 1991 you 
won't find any of this anymore. What seems 
European or American history painting isn't 
really. From the mid- or late 1960s you see more 
and more brush and ink painting done the new 
Chosônhwa style. And the Chosônhwa style is again 
loaning (in every technical aspect I can see) 
from late colonial Nihonga (which was then also a 
tool for propaganda). At this point I might add 
the same sentence Hyung Il Pai did in her 
posting: I want to state that this is only my 
personal opinion and does not reflect the main 
stream accounts of the development and 
appreciation of Korean arts. (Not that of South 
Korean scholars either). This seems like a 
controversial and/or provoking observation only 
if you look at this from within the same kimchi 
pot. Loaning from and building upon--and reacting 
to--existing earlier styles and techniques is 
otherwise what art AND art history is all about, 
and it does not at all indicate any sort of 
devaluation of the art work to point at such 
relations. In any case, to continue, Chosônhwa 
painting had then a strong influence on what 
happened to oil painting in North Korea. So, by 
the early 1970s oil painting, the showed many of 
the same traits Chosônhwa did: bright colors, 
simple often monochrome treatments of backgrounds 
etc., showing happy smiling people. By the late 
1980s and in the 1990s we see this style 
completely prevailing over all other styles: oil 
painting (and other techniques, e.g. acrylic 
painting) had basically adapted Chosônhwa 
techniques. You now have a hard time seeing what 
is brush and ink painting (Chosônhwa) and what is 
an oil painting, an acrylic, or a painting done 
in e.g. air brush technique--it all looks like 
Chosônhwa.
In that technical sense North Koreans have 
succeeded to create a new style (even though 
mostly build upon Nihonga as a starting point). 
What you present there in your comparison of 
Edward Hicks' Washington on horseback depiction 
with Ch'oe Ha-t'aek Kim family on horeseback 
painting is therefore more of a coincidental 
similarity. As far as the technique goes, 
historically this does not relate (North Koreans 
did not get that from U.S. paintings); it appears 
similar because of the folk art aspect in Hicks' 
painting and the adaptation of Chosônhwa 
techniques and aesthetics in North Korean oil 
painting--the outcome has many similarities. We 
would then be left with the subject matter, but 
here I see more differences than similarities. 
However, there are other such North Korean battle 
scenes that involve horses, and in some of them 
we find more similarities, but then more to 
general 19th century academic painting traditions 
(of depicting battle scenes).

Just noticed I have not discussed the variety of 
versions and how this relates to NK ... will do 
another time.

Best regards,
Frank

   


-- 
--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws
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