The Important Value of Shin Yun-bok

As mentioned above, Shin Yun-bok continued his original style of painting with free-spirited feelings and critical spirit, while he managed to get along with transcendence in his official position. His life and art paradoxically formed a unified relationship.

In the context of the late Joseon period, the popularity of customary paintings at the end of the 18th century has the following important values in the history of art:

Firstly, as a strong evidence of the era, it is a record that enables us to understand the social conditions of the Joseon era.

Secondly, it shows us the humanitarianism toward the modern society. The development of customary paintings is the result of the expression of people's lives as objective objects in the midst of social changes and the pursuit of a better value of life.

Thirdly, the daily state of the people's life was expressed in excellent art.

While the late Joseon customary paintings possessed these achievements and significance, they were only short-lived in history and then subsided, with the limitations of the times. After entering the 19th century, class antagonisms and contradictions began to deepen, and the Juche culture began to decline with a tendency of conservatization. Even the academy painters were driven by the desire for status promotion, entangled in the interests of the relationship, and failed to make the realism of the creation of more mature in-depth popular life.