This is a representative example of the ox painting that was in vogue during the mid-Chosŏn period, composed in the manner of a small-format landscape scene in which the ox is placed against a backdrop of rocks and trees. The treatment of the composition and the rock formations bears the clear imprint of the Zhe School manner as it was practiced in the mid-Chosŏn period.

Oxen (牛圖) depicts a pastoral scene in which two oxen rest at ease beside a large boulder, one seated and the other lying down. The animals' heavy, massive bodies are rendered through a carefully modulated ink technique — darker on the underside and lighter along the back — that produces a quality of gentle, rounded softness; the horns, hooves, eyes, and nostrils are emphasized in concentrated dark ink. The white highlights left around the pupils and the X-shaped rendering of the muzzle lend the animals an expression of calm docility. This particular mode of ox painting was established as a standard compositional type by Kim Si (金視) and his grandson Kim Sik (金埴), and from the latter half of the sixteenth century through the seventeenth century it constituted one of the defining canonical forms of the Korean ox painting tradition.