Shubun
Tensho Shubun (1414 – 1463) was a Japanese painter in the
Muromachi period and a Zen Buddhist monk, and - for some time -
abbot at the Shokoku-ji temple in Kyoto.
A student of Josetsu, Shubun became
one of the most influential painters of the suiboku style ink
painting alongside with Sesshu, his pupil. Many landscape paintings
in ink in varying quality and style are attributed to Shubun.
Examples are in the Fujiwara collection and the Seikado Foundation.
Famous is his realistic landscape painting Reading in a Bamboo
Grove (1446, in the Tokyo National Museum).
He was chief painter to the shogun. In 1423 or
1424, he went on an official trip to Korea as part of the shogun's
embassy.Shubun is credited in Japan, along with Seshu, as the greatest
and most influential painter of the Muromachi period. The cultural
roots in the Muromachi art lay in China's Southern Song dynasty,
with Zen as a primary principle in art. Shubun is believed to have
perfected the Japanese monochrome Zen painting.
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