Sesshū Tōyō

Sesshū Tōyō was a Japanese artist widely regarded as the greatest master of Japanese ink painting. Born in 1420, he was a Zen Buddhist monk as well as a painter, and he traveled to China to study its landscape traditions firsthand. He absorbed those lessons and forged a bold, distinctly Japanese style, using confident brushstrokes and areas of empty space to suggest mountains, mist, and water.

His famous long landscape scroll and his spare, powerful ink sketches show a masterful control of the brush, saying much with very little. His work shaped the whole later course of Japanese landscape painting. Sesshū is honored as a foundational figure in Japanese art, revered for the strength and simplicity of his ink landscapes.