Sesshu Toyo Travels to Ming China

1467

The Japanese ink wash painter Sesshu sailed to China to study landscape painting at its original source, spending two years in Ming monasteries and imperial studios. He was reportedly disappointed by the quality of contemporary Ming artists but deeply influenced by the Southern Song masters' works he studied in monastic collections. Returning to Japan, he transformed suiboku-ga ink painting into something distinctly Japanese: spare, spiritually charged, and devastatingly precise in its brushwork.