@prefix rdf: . @prefix ns1: . ns1:cleveland-136285 rdf:type . @prefix rdfs: . ns1:cleveland-136285 rdfs:label "Birds and Flowers in a Landscape of the Four Seasons" . @prefix ns3: . ns1:cleveland-136285 ns3:description "culture: Japan, Muromachi Period (1392-1573)" , "id: 136285" , "technique: Six-panel folding screen, ink and color on paper" , "wall_description: The monk-painter Sesshp is revered today, as he was in his own time. While he left Kyoto's sophisticated intel-lectual and cultural environment to live in a provincial village in a far western province, he seems never to have severed contacts with the monastic communities of his young adulthood. His residence in Yamaguchi proved fortuitous because his patron, the region's military lord, enjoyed considerable freedom in conducting trade missions overseas with Korea and China. Sesshp went to China in 1467 and traveled about the country, visiting well-known historical sites and Chan (Zen) temples before returning two years later. Thus he became familiar with contemporary painting practices, materials, formats, and subject matter. His assimilation and then transmission of these elements had a profound impact on the following generations of ink painters, patrons, and Zen communities throughout Japan. Despite the presence on these by\u00F8bu of the name \"Sesshp,\" they are from the hand of another accom-plished but as yet anonymous follower active in the middle of the sixteenth century. Sesshp's name here, as on a handful of similar bird-and-flower by\u00F8bu, attests to the master's identification at that time with the colorful mural paintings on the same theme emanating from Ming dynasty China. This genre had heretofore been relegated to hanging scroll compositions, so the intro-duction into temple and daimyo residences of such an attractive theme surely caused considerable excitement in the later fifteenth century, when in all likelihood Sesshp introduced it into the Japanese painting reper-toire. Subsequently, artists of varying backgrounds and training tried their hands at these large, dramatic scenes. From right to left the composition portrays an array of flowering plants in the near distance that indicate the passage of the seasons. Birds, usually paired, occupy this setting, engaged in various activities that lend naturalism and an air of peacefulness. The world they inhabit may be characterized pictorially by expansive middle-ground waterscapes that end where the far distant mountains rise as backdrops. These features appear consistently in other bird-and-flower by\u00F8bu attributed to Sesshp. Also noteworthy is the absence of any birds of prey such as the samurai's beloved hawks, emblems of fierceness and graceful strength that appear often in the by\u00F8bu of sixteenth-century Kano and Soga school painters." , "collection: ASIAN - Folding screen" , "measurements: Image: 158.5 x 359.4 cm (62 3/8 x 141 1/2 in.); Overall: 175.2 x 374.4 cm (69 x 147 3/8 in.)" , "creditline: Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry" , "tombstone: Birds and Flowers in a Landscape of the Four Seasons, second half of the 1500s. Follower of Sessh\u016B T\u014Dy\u014D (Japanese, 1420-1506). Six-panel folding screen, ink and color on paper; image: 158.5 x 359.4 cm (62 3/8 x 141 1/2 in.); overall: 175.2 x 374.4 cm (69 x 147 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry 1960.173" , "type: Painting" ; ns3:name "Birds and Flowers in a Landscape of the Four Seasons"@en ; ns3:creator . @prefix ns4: . ns1:cleveland-136285 ns4:agential _:vb163746 ; ns3:dateCreated "1500-1599" ; ns3:relatedLink ; ns3:temporal . @prefix ns5: . ns1:cleveland-136285 ns4:accessInfo ns5:accessinfo ; ns4:sourceInfo ns5:sourceinfo ; ns4:temporal _:vb163748 ; ns3:image ; ns4:relatedLink _:vb163747 . ns1:cleveland-exhib-byobu-1987 ns3:workFeatured ns1:cleveland-136285 . ns1:cleveland-exhib-japanese-decorative-1961 ns3:workFeatured ns1:cleveland-136285 .