Haboku sansui

The work is a development of suibokuga (水墨画) paintings made with Chinese ink (墨, sumi), using dark and light shades on a silk or paper medium.

In this style, the painter avoids strongly defined outlines, with shapes indicated by colour washes in lighter and darker tones.

In the foreground are cliffs and bushes, and the triangular roofline and a sloping banner for a wine shop with vertical lines forming a fence.

[3] It bears a dedicatory inscription by the artist, dating it to the middle of the third month in the fourth year of the Meiō era (that is, April or May 1495), when Sesshū was aged 76.

[4] On his journey home to Engaku-ji in Kamakura, Josui Sōen stopped in Kyoto, where he asked six Zen Buddhist monks from Gozan temples to add poems to the scroll.