Sesshu Toyo

Sesshu Toyo was a Japanese Zen monk and painter who lived from about 1420 to 1506 and is considered a great master of Japanese ink painting. Initially inspired by Chinese landscapes, his work holds a distinctively Japanese style reflecting Zen Buddhist aesthetics, and his prominent work captured images of landscapes, portraits, and birds and flowers, infused with Zen Buddhist beliefs, flattened perspective, and emphatic lines. Born into the samurai Oda family, he trained at Shokoku-ji temple in Kyoto as a Zen monk, showed a talent for painting from early childhood, and became widely revered throughout Japan as a wise, reputable Zen scholar and the greatest painter priest of the Zen sect. He worked in a painting atelier while training under Tensho Shubun, but after visiting China his work took on a distinctive Chinese influence, merging Japanese and Chinese styles into his own individualistic style of Zen paintings, and his influence was so wide that many schools of art appointed him their founder. His most acclaimed works are Winter Landscape, Birds and Flowers, and Four Landscape Scrolls of the Seasons. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/