Popular during Korea’s Joseon dynasty (1392–1910), the felicitous theme of boys playing in a garden—traditionally titled “One Hundred Boys”, or Baekjado in Korean—was introduced during China’s Song dynasty (960–1279) and frequently appeared in the arts of the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) periods. This Korean screen likely was inspired by a Qing painting, perhaps one by Leng Mei (active, 1677–1742), who was renowned for his paintings of women and children. The Baekja theme was used to decorate any object bearing a wish for numerous offspring, especially items for the bridal chamber. The theme symbolizes the wish for an abundance of sons and continuation of the family line, as well as the wish for the generations of descendants to achieve success in the civil service examinations.
Baekja scenes usually depict a large group of boys, sometimes numbering one hundred as the name implies. The “hundred boys” is an allusion to King Wen —legendary father of the founder of China’s Zhou dynasty (c. 1050 BC–256 BC), King Wu —who had twenty-four wives and ninety-nine sons. One day at Yanshan, King Wen found an infant after a thunderstorm, and he adopted the baby so that he could have a total of one hundred sons. King Wen thus established the ideal, and his one hundred sons became a popular motif in Chinese art and subsequently in Korean art.