Page 390 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

tained active trade and diplomatic relations with
China. In 1467, under the nominal patronage of
the politically enfeebled shogun Yoshimasa, the
rival Ouchi and Hosokawa clans organized a trade
mission to China, and after delays the ships left
the port of Hakata for Ningbo in early 1468.
Sesshu and Shugetsu accompanied the mission
for the Ouchi, the former being described as
"purchaser-priest." The two-year sojourn in
China, taking Sesshu from Ningbo north to Bei-
jing by way of Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Nanjing,
was a crucial event in the artist's career, both per-
sonally and artistically.
Ningbo was the center of the painting work-
shops continuing Southern Song landscape, fig-
ure, and Buddhist traditions, and there Sesshu
certainly saw plentiful examples of the Ma-Xia
(Ma Yuan and Xia Gui) landscape style. Suzhou
must have afforded some exposure to the emerg-
ing wen ren (literati) school of painting, led by
Shen Zhou (1427-1509). And in Beijing the court
painters received the Japanese artist as an equal.
Only eight years after Sesshu's return from Japan
Priest Ryoshin documented Sesshu's commission
from the Ming court for a wall painting (screen?
or mural?). On his 1495 "splashed-ink" landscape
Sesshu himself recorded that he had learned from
Zhang Yousheng (now unknown) and Li Zai (act.
c. 1425-1470); it is not clear whether he knew the
painters personally, or only their works. The
breadth and depth of Sesshu's exposure to
Chinese art in China was almost certainly greater
than that of any other Japanese artist of his time.
By the time he returned to Japan, the monu-
mental tradition of Northern Song landscape as
preserved by Li Zai, the Southern Song Ma-Xia
tradition, the Buddhist painting and flower paint-
ing traditions of the Ningbo area, the new court
painting of early Ming, and the new wen ren style
were all familiar to him.
His social position and self-esteem were also
bolstered by his trip. Touches of precedence, such
as being chief guest at the great Chan (Zen)
temple Jingde Si on Mt. Tiantong near Ningbo,
were treasured by Sesshu and flaunted in his sig-
natures on later major paintings: "Occupant of
the First Seat at Tiantong in Siming [Ningbo]."
Especially after his relative obscurity in Japan's
artistic capital, Kyoto, to be acclaimed in China as
a major master was probably most heartening.
For Sesshu's mastery of Chinese styles our
major pictorial evidence is the set of Landscapes
of the Four Seasons, exhibited here. The overall
effect of the four hanging scrolls —in tone, com-
position, and allusions to tradition —is almost
totally Chinese. Only in certain brush details and
in a few idiosyncratic descriptions of motifs such
as rocks and bamboo can one clearly distinguish
the mature and classic Sesshu. In the lower half of
"Spring" the abbreviated indications of architec-
ture, crackling prunus branches, and axlike brush
strokes defining rocks are pure Ma Yuan, while

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