Winter Landscape

Sesshû TôyôJapan, Sengoku Period (1490-1573)

University of Michigan Museum of Art
Ann Arbor, United States

Details

Title: Winter Landscape
Creator: Sesshû Tôyô
Creator Lifespan: 1420/1506
Creator Nationality: Japanese
Creator Gender: Male
Creator Birth Place: Bithū Province, Japan
Date Created: Japan, Sengoku Period (1490-1573)
Location: Japan
Physical Dimensions: w47.98 x h107.32 mm (work)
Label Copy: While American audiences may be most familiar with print artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige, the one artist known to all Japanese school children is Sesshû. Sesshû’s reputation as an artist of extraordinary abilities was well established by the end of his life and has remained undiminished in his homeland for five centuries. Sesshû was born in a small town on Japan’s Inland Sea. He moved to Kyoto to become a Zen monk, where he encountered Shûbun, then the pre-eminent painter of ink landscapes in Japan. Sesshû’s early works drew on Shûbun’s manner, but his style changed dramatically after a three-year sojourn in Ming China in the 1460s. There he was able to study with court painters in Beijing as well as prominent literati artists and Zen monks. He gained access to collections of famous earlier paintings of the Song and Yuan periods (tenth to fourteenth centuries), and made detailed sketches of what he saw. Upon his return to Japan, he developed his own style, freely incorporating elements from both the paintings and the grand scenery he had encountered in China. His mature works are characterized by bold, exuberant brushwork. This hanging scroll is one of a pair that was handed down in the collection of the Kuroda family, lords of a major domain in western Japan, near the area where Sesshû spent the last part of his life. (The companion scroll is also in the UMMA collection, 1970/2.150.) The signature and seal are regarded as dubious. Whether the painting is actually from Sesshû’s hand is a subject of debate, but recent scholarship argues that if not by Sesshû himself, it is at least from his circle and a good representative of his late style.
Type: Painting
External Link: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/musart/x-1970-sl-2.151/1970_2.151.JPG?lasttype=boolean;lastview=thumbnail;resnum=1;sel9=ic_exact;size=20;sort=relevance;start=1;subview=detail;view=entry;rgn1=musart_an;select1=starts;q1=1970%2F2.151
Medium: hanging scroll, ink on paper

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