Such artists as Gauguin, Monticelli, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Pissarro, and Braque have been highly influential as they have been the most taught in art schools, with books both readily available and translated into Korean early.

Buddhist temples and hermitages across the country are rich archives of folk paintings, ranging from large icon images for ritual use to illustrations for sutras and anecdotes about famous monks and their portraits.

[4] Folk paintings in this category included character designs of the popular themes of loyalty and filial piety, pictures depicting the life stories of renowned scholars and depictions of a carp jumping up from the river to transform into a dragon symbolizing the aspiration for distinguished academic achievement and a successful career in officialdom.

These paintings generally repeat popular motifs with relatively poor techniques, but attest to the nation's religious tradition harmonizing various faiths such as shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

Japanese tradition declared that Yi was so skilled after his "Catfish and Gourd" painting that Shogun Yoshimochi claimed him to be a son of the legendary Josetsu, as an adoptive honorific.

While the Joseon Dynasty began under military auspices, Goryeo styles were let to evolve, and Buddhist iconography (bamboo, orchid, plum and chrysanthemum; and the familiar knotted goodluck symbols) were still a part of genre paintings.

Genre paintings of the late Joseon Dynasty Era and true-view landscape paintings have become celebrated and emblematic, but it also shows the unassuming reality of Korean people and their past, not just those that hold high positions of power but those who work under them, the commoners or lower classes and seemingly even women (Park J.P., 2018).

In modern Korea, these paintings are held up and preserved as mementos that show the heart-warming and harmonious late Joseon Dynasty's thriving society.

With these paintings, it is also believed to have brought a projection of an uncomplicated and nostalgic-producing past into the eyes of the viewer, these nothing short of masterpiece works created by Kim Hong-do (1745 – c. 1810) and Sin Yun-Bok (1758 – ?)

Some modern studies relate the historical particularities of the time such as the cultural and ideological landscape to the Korean artists’ motivation and inspiration, as the attention that was put into their artwork nurtured the popularization of these paintings.

Another viewpoint would be an interpretive approach towards the escalating interest of learning at the time, which provided the Joseon era artists the motivation and inspiration needed to view the scenes of daily life in Korea and the changes in the social landscape from a new perspective, as Joseon artists put much time in their pursuit of academic practical studies, the people and their lives were a key factor in contributing to their artwork, as well as their determination to depict and observe the people they encountered around them.

Yun Duseo would go on to paint many drawings that were based on the labors, behaviors, leisure and emotions of the common people that he observed around him.

This would begin to stir the people as it was unprecedented in that time period, and the topic of these artworks would become primary motifs rather than decorative additions as in previous eras.

Other important artists of the "literati school" include: Chaekgeori is a genre of still-life painting from the Joseon period of Korea that features books as the dominant subject.

[8] Korean artists from the middle 1880s until 1945 had a very difficult time before Korea was freed by the allies after the unconditional surrender of Japan.

It is a sensitive issue, with artists who studied and worked in Japan and painted in the Japanese style forced into self-defense and justification of compromise without other alternatives.

Bridging the late Joseon dynasty and the Japanese occupation period were noteworthy artists such as Chi Un-Yeong (1853–1936).