Yi Han-chŏl (李漢喆), the most representative professional painter of the nineteenth century, left behind work in virtually every pictorial category — portraiture, landscape, figure painting, animal painting, flower-and-bird, fish and crab, and the Four Gentlemen — giving full testimony to the range of a dedicated professional painter's craft. In addition to the present work, he produced numerous fish and crab paintings of varying scale. Through the first half of the eighteenth century, fish and crab painting had been a genre practiced as a gentlemanly avocation by literati painters; from that point onward, however, specialist professional painters began to emerge in this field — among them Chang Han-jong (張漢宗) and his son Chang Chun-nyang (張駿良), Cho Chŏng-gyu (趙廷奎), and Cho Sŏk-jin (趙錫晉). In accounting for the increased popularity of the fish and crab painting genre in comparison to earlier periods, one cannot fail to consider the role of the Jasansŏbo (茲山魚譜), the illustrated catalogue of marine life compiled by Chŏng Yak-jŏn (丁若銓, 1758–1816) during his exile on Hŭksan Island and published in 1815.

This pair of hanging scrolls depicting fish and crabs takes as its respective subjects four crabs with reed flowers, and three mandarin fish with a branch of peach blossom. The mandarin fish (gwŏlŏ, 鱖魚) conventionally symbolizes official career and advancement, its name being homophonous with the word for the royal palace (gwŏl, 闕); when painted together with peach blossoms, the composition is understood as a visual realization of the line "Peach blossoms drift on the flowing water; the mandarin fish grows fat" (桃花流水鱖魚肥) from the Fisherman's Song (漁夫歌) by the Tang poet Zhang Zhihe (張志和). The present work bears an inscription in the spirit of Zhang Zhihe's verse: "The spring current flows peacefully through waters of peach blossom; the darting fish, a foot in length, grows plump and sleek (春流無恙桃花水 潑潑游鱗一尺肥)" — and in the drifting fall of peach petals and the unhurried ease of the mandarin fish, the poetic vision of fish fattening as peach blossoms float downstream is given vivid pictorial expression.

The crab, whose hard shell carries the same pronunciation as the character for "first place" (kap, 甲), conventionally signifies success in the civil examinations, and is typically painted together with reeds — which carry the meaning of chŏllo (傳臚), the announcement of successful candidates — to reinforce this auspicious symbolism. The inscription "Armored and grasping its weapon, it is called the Many-legged One (被甲持戟號稱郭索)" describes the characteristic form of the crab in a spirit of playful pictorial commentary. While both paintings encode the auspicious aspiration of passing the state examinations and attaining high office, their inscriptions take a paradoxically oblique approach to this meaning.

In terms of composition, branches of peach blossom and reeds are disposed diagonally in the upper portion of their respective panels, while the crabs and mandarin fish rise toward them in sweeping semicircular arrangements; when the two panels are placed side by side, the whole resolves into a satisfyingly stable circular compositional structure. With the exception of the mandarin fish, all four crabs, the aquatic plants, and the reeds are rendered in the boneless (molgol) technique with minimal modulation of ink tonality. The crabs repeat in closely similar forms, but the placement of a crab rendered in white among them mitigates the potential monotony of the repetition. The result is a fish and crab painting of understated refinement, imbued throughout with the spirit of the literati manner.