Landscape of the Four Seasons
c. 1560
Medium
Pair of six-fold screens; ink and light color on paper
Dimensions
156.5 × 337 cm (61 5/8 × 132 11/16 in.)
Classification
painting
Department
Arts of Asia
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
198948
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Sesson Shukei was a Zen Buddhist monk and painter who achieved his idiosyncratic painterly style during an itinerant career in eastern Japan, seemingly without ever traveling to Kyoto, Japan’s cultural and political capital at the time. Sesson’s dream-like Chinese landscape expands before our eyes in understandable spatial depth, an effect that is enhanced by the folds of the screen. Reading the composition in the same manner as the Japanese language, from right to left, the seasons flow from th...