Korean poets and literati were long fond of the soaring sea cliffs and pine groves in coastal towns of Gangwon-do. These scenic spots of eastern Korea were widely talked about in poems and travel literature, and were depicted in paintings. The so-called“Eight Views of Gwandong,”designating eight scenic sites lying east of Daegwallyeong Pass, were particularly prized in the making of topographical landscapes. They included Chongseokjeong of Tongcheon, Samilpo of Goseong, Cheonganjeong of Ganseong, Naksansa of Yangyang, Gyeongpodae of Gangneung,Jukseoru of Samcheok, Mangyangjeong of Uljin, and Wolsongjeong of Pyeonghae. One interesting fact about these places is that once they became established literary themes, they acquired a unity as a body of formalized themes and retained this unity for hundreds of years.Meanwhile, the Ten Views of Gwandong, an extended list of Gangwon-do’s scenic spots, adding Sijungdae of Heupgok and Haesanjeong of Goseong to Eight Views of Gwandong, were rarely mentioned in literature and became landscape themes only once into the 18th century.Eight Views of Gwandong were most popular as landscape themes in the traditional painting scene of the 18th century. After the stylistic formalization of Eight Views of Gwandong during the 17th century, there was a sharp increase in the production of paintings on this topic, as well as on the Ten Views of Gwandong, partly under the influence of Chinese painting albums and woodblock prints depicting the images of Eight Views of China, brought to Korea around this time. Once into the 18th century, paintings on these landscape themes were particularly actively produced for the enjoyment of the royal house members, government officials, and other members of Joseon’s ruling class. King Jeong-Jo is said to have once enjoyed a series of landscape paintings on Eight Views of Gwandong, offered to him as a gift, and court painters frequently made paintings on the same theme intended to be displayed for royal court events. These landscapes were equally popular among government officials and members of Joseon’s literati.The predilection for paintings on this theme was not limited to literati members affiliated with the Noron party who exchanged with Jeong Seon or were influenced by him, but was shared across the partisan divided. Men of letters affiliated with the Soron party, such as Kim Sang-seong, Park Sa-hae and Kang Jae-hang, and Sobuk personalities including the likes of Heo Pil are also known to have been fond of landscapes on this theme.Jeong Seon was a painter who had a strong influence on the development of the theme ‘Eight Views of Gwandong.’Known for his keen interest in the eight landscape scene genre,Jeong Seon, when painting Eight Views of Gwandong, made variations on traditional compositions and at times drew inspirations from Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers to create new compositions and motifs. Jeong Seon’s influence is largely felt in landscapes by such literati painters as Heo Pil and Park Sa-hae, but these people also attempted to go beyond Jeong Seon to fashion their own styles. Landscape works by Heo and Park were also close in style and atmosphere to the so-called poetic landscape genre, characterized by references to well-known poems. Many jeyeong poems (poems produced on a common motif during a poetic meeting)included in Sinjeung Dongguk Yeoji Seungnam (Revised and Expanded Geography of Korea), for instance, were directly and indirectly influenced by landscape paintings by Heo Pil and Lee Bangun.Toward the late 18th century, Kim Hong-do went on a sketching trip, on the order of King Jeong-Jo, to Geumgangsan Mountain and its surrounding areas in the Gwandong region. Various new sites of Gwandong, previously never depicted in landscape paintings, came to be known to the artistic circles of Joseon through Kim Hong-do’s works, eliciting enthusiastic responses. This broadening of thematic horizons in Joseon landscap...