Footnotes

• Two Figures is the fourth Park Sookeun painting to be offered in our San Francisco auctions: the first, Selling by the Roadside, was sold in Bonhams & Butterfield Sale 7584O November 17, 2004, lot 134; the second, Roadside Vendor, was sold in Sale 16096. June 23, 2008, lot 8330. The third, On the Road Home, was sold in sale 18412, December 13, 2010, lot 5302.
  
  The third painting, On the Road Home, and the present lot, Two Figures, were painted in the same year, 1964, and also share the same history. On the Road Home was owned by the late Mr. and Mrs. Frederic Melford Rea of Portola Valley California. Mr. Rea, founder of Western Business Publications, began publishing travel information on the Pacific rim in 1957. The owner of Two Figures was a member of his staff. Mr. Rea also served as Vice-President - Publications for the Pacific Area Travel Association (PATA). Mr. and Mrs. Rea, as well as the owner of this painting, traveled to Seoul in 1967 for a PATA conference held there. It was during the trip to Seoul that On the Road Home and Two Figures were purchased.
  
  This simple composition of two women carrying baskets as they walk to or from the marketplace recurs in a number of Park Soo-keun's later paintings. See, for example, the placement of two dark-haired women carrying baskets above a woman seated in the forground in a 1963 composition, published in Oh Kwangsoo and Yi Guyul, Park Soo-Keun 1914-1965 (Seoul, Chun Jegook, 1995), page 106 (unnumbered, counting from the front). The closest comparison to Two Figures can be found another double-tiered composition from 1964, where two women with white head scarves carry baskets in the foreground below a register of two seated women conversing to the left of two standing children: see Korean Art Appraisal Association, Park Soo-Keun (Seoul, Maronie Books, 2009), cat. no. 54.

Lot heading

---

Category: Asian Art

---

Auction terms and conditions