Sesshū

Fine Artist

• Born: 1420
• Birthplace: Akahama, Bitchū Province (now Okayama Prefecture), Japan
• Died: 1506
• Place of death: Yamaguchi, Suho Province, Japan

Japanese painter

Sesshū is considered the greatest of Japanese landscape painters and a major ink painter whose genius pushed Japanese art toward its apex at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Area of Achievement Art

Early Life

Sesshū (sehs-shoo) was born in a rural village and was placed while very young in the Hōfukuji, a large temple in the city of Soja nearby, to undergo religious training. Still in his early years, Sesshū entered a monastery in Kyōto as a novice. He acted as attendant to a priest, Shunrin Shuto, who eventually became chief abbot.

He also studied painting with the monk-painter Tenshō Shūbun, who later was welcomed by the Ashikaga shogunate as a master of the official academy. Both Shunrin and Shūbun had a tremendous influence on Sesshū’s life. Sesshū became a monk and practiced Zen discipline under the tutelage of the Zen master Shunrin, who was highly respected for his piety and truthfulness. Sesshū’s career was determined by Shūbun, whom Sesshū called “my painting master,” and who was the first Japanese artist to rise to the full power and grasp of Chinese art.

Life’s Work

Already enjoying great renown as a painter and past the age of forty, Sesshū left the monastery in 1462, for nothing could satisfy him short of studying in China. He moved west in the hope of making his way to China and established himself in a studio in Yamaguchi, which was under the control and patronage of theŌuchi family. Japan was going through a time of civil disturbance that culminated in the Ōnin Wars (1467-1477), which devastated Kyōto and dispersed its culture to the provinces; Yamaguchi thrived as a Little Kyōto.

In 1467, Sesshū traveled to China with a shogunal commercial fleet to study Chinese ink painting at first hand. His trip, which took him by land from Ningbo to Beijing, gave him numerous opportunities to see not only some famous Chinese scenery but also many Chinese paintings, including those by Ming Dynasty painters still unknown in Japan. Sesshū had gone to China in search of a good painting master and found only mediocre ones who were weighed down with academic formalism. The grandiose landscape of the continent, however, revealed to him the secret composition in Chinese painting. Wherever he went, he drew landscapes and scenes of popular life that display the essential qualities of his art: solid construction and concise brushwork. He traveled especially to all the famous scenes where the great Sung landscapists had painted from nature. His style of sketching was so rapid and incisive that he brought back to Japan in 1469 thousands of fresh impressions of all the most noted places in Chinese scenery and history, along with accurate studies of costumes worn by famous individuals and of portrait types.

After returning to Japan in 1469 with his invaluable raw materials from China, Sesshū moved from place to place in northern Kyūshū in order to avoid the disorder of civil war. He finally settled inŌita, under the patronage of theŌtomo family. There he opened a studio he named Tenkai Togaro, situated high on the side of a hill overlooking town, water, and mountains. Sesshū would often begin his work by gazing out on the beautiful broad landscape that lay beneath his window. After a drink of sake, he would pick up his bamboo flute and play a sonorous, lingering melody to establish the right mood. Only then would he take up his brush and begin to paint. He was truly prolific; his floor was constantly covered with scattered pieces of used and unused paper. His monk friend Bofu Ryoshin, after visiting him in 1476, commented that everyone in the town, from the nobility to the common people, admired Sesshū’s art and asked for a piece of his work. It seems that Sesshū never grew weary of depicting his private world, communing from time to time with the great world of nature outstretched beneath his balcony.

His practice of zazen (meditation) and his custom of making leisurely pilgrimages to various Buddhist temples and monasteries seem to have given him a strong body and robust health; he was able to travel on foot to various parts of the country, painting realistic pictures of the places he visited along the way. Sesshū always kept his clerical name and his Buddhist robe, which allowed him to travel through districts that were dangerous or that were barred to others.

Between 1481 and 1484, Sesshū made a long journey throughout Japan, making landscape drawings along the way. This artistic pilgrimage deepened his ability to capture the essential features of Japanese landscapes in his wash drawings. The Sung tradition of Chinese wash drawing had been fully assimilated in Japan, thanks to Shūbun’s talents and common sense, but it was Sesshū who first succeeded in giving a deeply personal and national expression to the new technique. Moreover, Sesshū’s style is remarkable for its clear departure from the lyrical mode associated with his teacher Shūbun. Dynamic brushwork and structured composition dominate Sesshū’s works. He thoroughly developed and perfected a style of his own, and throughout his career, he pushed back the limits of expression. Sesshū was completely wrapped up in his art. On returning to the west, he set up his Tenkai Togaro studio in Yamaguchi.

Sesshū’s studio became a place of pilgrimage as people requested a token from his brush. He painted the walls of many monasteries (unfortunately long-since destroyed) and hundreds of sixfold screens, of which many have moldered away or been burned. An enormous amount of his work remains, however, though it is so zealously prized and guarded that few have seen many of his great masterpieces.

Among his compositions that are available to public view and representative of his work are Autumn and Winter Landscapes (c. 1470-1490), a pair of hanging scrolls that must have belonged to a sequence of four seasons, a traditional theme for a set of landscapes, and Landscapes of the Four Seasons (1486), a long picture sequence illustrating the transition from spring to winter, done in a horizontal hand scroll format and representing the synthesis of his art. Haboku Landscape (1495), his best-known work, is a landscape in cursive style. It was given to his disciple Josui Soen, a painter-monk of the Enkakuji, when he took leave of Sesshū to return to Kamakura after a long course of study in his studio. The landscape, with a few rapid wash strokes accentuated with dark black lines, skillfully represents a tiny segment of nature lacking neither grandeur nor stability. Amanohashidate (1502-1505; bridge of heaven), drawn on the spot during a visit to the famous place on the Sea of Japan, represents the climax of his art. In this panoramic view of a pilgrimage site, all the details are represented with clean-cut lines, accompanied even by the names of the localities. Sesshū succeeded in capturing the innermost qualities of the famous place; to the technique of wash painting, he gave a highly personal expression.

Sesshū’s versatility extended to other genres such as bird and flower painting numerous sets of screens on this subject have been attributed to him. Moreover, noteworthy examples of portraits and other figure subjects including Huike Severing His Arm, a large, deeply moving composition executed in 1496 in which Huike (Huiko) is cutting off his arm to show his will power to Bodhidharma.

Sesshū died shortly after painting Amanohashidate; he was vigorously healthy right to the end of his life. During his lifetime, Sesshū was the host of many pupils, mostly Zen priests, of whom the greatest is Sesson Shūkei. Among other acknowledged masters of this Sesshū school were Shugetsu Tokan, Umpo Toetsu, Kaiho Yusho, and Soga Chokuan. The Sesshū school continued on into the seventeenth century before melding with other schools. Its decline and death was not surprising, for no school of Japanese pictorial art so entirely depended on the skill of its delineator.

Significance

The style of Sesshū is central in the whole range of Asian art. Its primary vigor lies in its line Sesshū’s conceptions are thought out in terms of dominant lines. The line is hard, rough, and splintery, as if his brush were intentionally made of hog bristles irregularly set. Sesshū is a great master of straight line and angle. Moreover, he perfected the Chinese suiboku style of painting, making it typically Japanese by using the haboku technique, literally meaning flung ink, which employs a freely handled wash. Suiboku was monochrome work using black ink on a brush, which emphasized skilled brush work in place of a balance of color. Sesshū was the master of this style.

Sesshū loved painting landscapes because the landscape remains personal. It is the individual who selects its elements, stamps them with a seal, and infuses them with strength and will. The genius clings throughout to human values, imposes them on the world, and victoriously refashions a world of his or her own.

Sesshū’s primary achievements can be easily categorized. He was preeminently skillful in landscape and figure painting. He excelled in the portrayal of birds, animals, and flowers. His manner was distinguished by the rapidity and certainty of its brushwork. He cultivated the habit of capturing as much of the subject as possible with one stroke. The effects of details such as leaves, feathers, and the like were almost invariably done at the single application of the brush, controlled by an unerring but perfectly free hand.

Many of the finest artists of the sixteenth century claimed to be his successor. The competition became so fierce that Unkoku Togan and Hasegawa Tohaku became embroiled in a legal dispute over the right to claim artistic descent from Sesshū.

Bibliography

Akiyama, Terukaza. Japanese Painting. Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing, 1961. A beautiful volume with illustrations covering the whole range of Japanese painting according to their genre. Chapter 6 emphasizes the influence of Chinese art and the development of monochrome painting, at the heart of which is Sesshū.

Binyon, Laurence. Painting in the Far East. 3d ed., rev. Reprint. New York: Dover, 1959. An interesting analysis of Sesshū’s paintings appears in chapter 11.

Brinker, Helmut, and Hiroshi Kanazawa. Zen: Masters of Meditation in Images and Writings. Translated by Andreas Leisinger. Zürich, Switzerland: Museum Reitberg, 1996. This catalog of a museum exhibition places a study of major Zen artists alongside legendary figures and clergymen. It is meant to emphasize the philosophical component and the spiritual function of Zen art. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Fenollosa, Ernest F. Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art. 2 vols. New and rev. ed. Reprint. New York: Dover, 1963. One of the first interpreters of note on Japanese and Chinese art. Reviews Sesshū’s accomplishments and their significance. Provides a unique perspective of Sesshū.

Paine, Robert Treat, and Alexander Soper. The Art and Architecture of Japan. 3d ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981. Part 1 deals with the broad sweep of Japanese painting through history. Chapters 9 and 10 emphasize Sesshū, his compatriots, and his influence on successors. This revised edition contains an invaluable bibliography by W. D. Waterhouse.

Philips, Quitman E. The Practices of Painting in Japan, 1475-1500. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2000. Close study of Japanese painting and society, arguing that the painting should be seen as a body of social practices that forms one component of the larger body of social practices. Combines art historical analysis with sociology and social history of the period. Includes illustrations, appendices, bibliographic references, and index.

Sadao, Tsuneko S., and Stephanie Wada. Discovering the Arts of Japan: A Historical Overview. New York: Kodansha International, 2003. General survey of the evolution of the forms and functions of Japanese art through history. Places Sesshū within his broad cultural context. Includes illustrations, bibliographic references, and index.

Tanaka, Ichimatsu. Japanese Ink Painting: Shūbun to Sesshū. Translated by Bruce Darling. New York: Weatherhill, 1972. A standard work on Sesshū and his master Shūbun that places them in historic perspective in the development of Japanese painting. Chapter 4 is devoted exclusively to Sesshū.

Warner, Langdon. The Enduring Art of Japan. New York: Grove Press, 1952. A classic analysis of Japanese art trends in a historical perspective. Chapter 5 emphasizes the Ashikaga period, into which fit Sesshū and ink painting.

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