Sesshū Tōyō

Sesshū Tōyō (c. 1420–1506) was the greatest Japanese ink painter of his age. Born into a samurai family in Bitchū Province, he became a Zen monk at Kyoto's Shōkoku-ji and studied for twenty years under Tenshō Shūbun. After leaving Kyoto he painted at a provincial Zen temple in western Japan.

In 1467 he sailed to Ming China with a Japanese envoy and studied Chinese landscape masters directly. He fused their realism with Japanese Zen sensibility in works such as his Winter Landscape and Four Landscape Scrolls of the Seasons. He died at Masuda in 1506, and later Japanese painting schools claimed him as founder.