Daoist Master Fei Zhangfang

When it was painted

By the late 1550s, Sesson Shūkei was a Zen monk past fifty. Japan was in its Warring States period, carved up among feuding lords. Sesson spent those restless years moving around the eastern provinces, painting as he went.

He was born in Hitachi Province, today's Ibaraki Prefecture, into the Satake, a warrior clan. Instead of carrying on the family line, he entered a temple and became a monk. He deeply admired the earlier ink painter Sesshū. Even his name shows it: the first character of Sesson, 雪, meaning snow, is the same one that begins Sesshū's name.

His travels took him to places like Aizu, Odawara, and Kamakura, and he kept painting all along the way. Chinese tales of immortals and Daoist masters were among his favorite subjects. His picture of the immortal Lü Dongbin riding a dragon through the sky is well known.

Fei Zhangfang steps out of one of those tales. In the market he spotted an old medicine seller who, at closing time, hopped into a gourd hanging at his stall. Fei became the old man's student. Later he rode home on a bamboo staff his teacher gave him, and when he tossed the staff into a pond, it turned into a dragon. Sesson shows the staff plunging into the spray.

Sesson lived into his eighties. He spent his last years in a small hermitage in the lands of the Tamura lords of Miharu, in today's Fukushima Prefecture. Later painters, including Ogata Kōrin and artists of the Kano school, were strongly influenced by his ink work. This scroll entered The Met's collection in 2022.

Now follow the old man's stare down the paper. The white spray where the staff strikes is waiting there, and beside it, that hazy shape in the mist. The moment the staff becomes a dragon has been held still on this sheet for more than four centuries.