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context: painting > Zen painting > Artists
Mokuan Seien
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Four Sleepers |
Generally considered the first great Japanese Zen painter. He died somewhere around the middle of the Fourteenth Century. He was expert in a range of Chinese styles, and clearly displays the humour that was to be a major thread running through Zen painting ever after. He was also a priest ahead of being a painter. It's hard to make out the 'Four Sleepers' in the painting shown, but the biggest is resting his left arm on a tiger. I can't get desperately excited about Mokuan's work, but it does make me smile, and it needs mentioning, at the least.