CHANG SUNG-OP

born 1843, Taewon, Korea [now in South Korea] died 1897, Seoul also called Owon (Korean: My Garden) an outstanding painter of the late Yi dynasty (13921910) in Korea. An orphan, Chang worked as a servant to a wealthy family, learning his art by watching the master's son study painting. Although he later worked with Chinese painting manuals, he had no formal teachers and was so illiterate that he was unable to sign his own paintings. Nevertheless, he was the first Korean to master the art of painting on the thin, fast-reacting Chinese paper instead of the thick, slow-reacting traditional Korean paper.