Korean painters participated in two major cultural trends of the late Choson period in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: inquiry into things Korean and investigation of things Western. Departing from Chinese sources long considered authoritative, they developed the distinctly Korean mode known as "true-view" landscape painting for depicting the scenery of their own country. Rooted in the documentary painting of the early Choson period and displaying special techniques developed to describe distinctive features of Korea's topography, true-view paintings portray the most exemplary and...