Landscape

This is an ink landscape that Sesshu painted when he was 76. It is a hanging scroll, ink on paper, measuring 148.9 x 32.7 cm, and is designated a National Treasure. It is rendered in shades of a single ink: at the very top, faintly, distant rocky mountains; in the middle, in slightly darker ink, the low hill in front of them; and at the bottom, a nearer mountain and a calm water surface. It is a convention of landscape painting that the higher up the picture, the more distant the scenery.

A house stands on the nearest mountain, and the flag on a pole sticking out from its eaves is the sign of a shop serving meals. A small boat also floats on the water.

Among the inscriptions at the top, the lowest section is in Sesshu's own hand and records, in the manner of an autobiography, that he painted this picture at the request of his disciple Soen and that he studied painting in China under Li Zai and Zhang Youcheng. The upper two sections are poems by six monks, including Getsuo Shukyo, that Soen obtained by taking the painting to temples in Kyoto. It is a valuable source for knowing Sesshu, and it also conveys the exchanges among Zen monks who enjoyed painting and Chinese poetry.