Clearing after Rain on Mount Inwang (Inwangjesaekdo)

Jeong Seon painted the granite dome of Mount Inwang, on the edge of Seoul, just as the clouds lift after a downpour, the rain-soaked rock laid in broad saturated sweeps of black ink with mist still caught in the pine-filled ravines below. Rather than copy the idealized Chinese scenery expected of a painter, he went out and recorded a real Korean place he could see, the manner Koreans call 'true-view' landscape. Made when he was seventy-five, it is the cornerstone of Korea's own painting tradition.