Late-Joseon painter who blended the Northern and Southern schools
| Life | 1707 ~ 1769 |
| Era | 조선 후기 |
| Clan | 청송 심씨 |
Sim Sa-jeong (沈師正, 1707–1769) was a late-Joseon painter of the Cheongsong Sim clan, with the courtesy name Isuk and the pen name Hyeonjae. A great-grandson of Chief State Councillor Sim Ji-won and grandson of Sim Ik-chang, he was the second son of Sim Jeong-ju, known for his ink grapes; his maternal grandfather Jeong Yu-seung was also a scholar-painter of grapes.
Though born into a distinguished family, his fortunes collapsed when his grandfather Sim Ik-chang was stripped of office and exiled for examination fraud in 1699 and, after his release, was accused with Kim Il-gyeong of plotting against the crown prince (the future King Yeongjo); he died under torture in 1725, and the family was branded as the descendants of a traitor. Sim Sa-jeong therefore gave up an official career and lived by painting.
He studied painting with Jeong Seon as a boy until Jeong left for a provincial post in 1721. In 1748 he was chosen to help supervise the copying of royal portraits, but was removed after five days when an official objected to entrusting the task to a traitor's grandson. He devoted himself all the more to painting, producing several works a day even near sixty, and died in poverty outside the West Gate in 1769, aged 63.
His closest friend was Gang Se-hwang, with whom he painted and viewed art, and collectors such as Kim Gwang-su and Kim Gwang-guk gave him access to Chinese paintings and manuals; in 1761 he and Gang produced a joint album. Building on the Zhe school and the Southern school of literati painting, he created a style of his own and is ranked with Jeong Seon and Jo Yeong-seok among the leading painters of late Joseon. Gang judged his flowers and insects finest, followed by birds and animals, then landscapes.
His major works include Mooring on the River at Night, Searching for Plum Blossoms at Baqiao and the scroll The Road to Shu, held by the National Museum of Korea, the Kansong Art Museum and other collections.