Korea Around 1900: The Paintings of Gisan

This book of landscape and genre paintings by the 19th-century Korean artist Gisan documents traditional daily life in Korea around 1900. Gisan worked in Korean port cities and as a result his work was disseminated and sold internationally. In fact, the number of his works in North American and European collections far surpasses that found in Korea. Korea Around 1900 includes 27 poster-format paintings from the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum as well as 23 small-format paintings from the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, Netherlands. The ink-and-colour paintings depict a vanished Korea of pastoral landscapes, traditional customs and costume, and the rhythm of the seasons.