Sesshu (1421-1507) was a priest who visited China and studied painting there for several years, at length returning in 1469, disappointed with the living Chinese artists, and resolved to strike out a style of his own, based upon that of the old masters. He was the boldest and most original of Japanese landscape artists, leaving powerful and poetic records of the scenery of his own land as well as that of China, and trusting more to the sure and sweeping stroke of the brush than to colour. Shubun was an artist of little less power, but he followed more closely his exemplars, the Chinese masters of the 12th and 13th centuries; while Kano Masanobu (1424-1520), trained in the love of Chinese art, departed little from the canons he had learned from Josetsu or Oguri Sotan. It was left to his more famous son, Motonobu, to establish the school which bears the family name. Kano Motonobu (1477-1559) was one of the greatest Japanese painters, an eclectic of genius, who excelled in every style and every branch of his art. His variety was inexhaustible, and he remains to this day a model whom the most distinguished artists are proud to imitate. The names of the celebrated members of this long line are too many to quote here, but the most accomplished of his descendants was Tanyu, who died in 1674, at the age of seventy-three. The close of this long period brought a new style of art, that of the Korin school. Ogata Korin (1653-1716) is claimed by both the Tosa and Kano schools, but his work bears more resemblance to that of an erratic offshoot of the Kano line named Sotatsu than to the typical work of the academies. He was an artist of eccentric originality, who achieved wonders in bold decorative effects in spite of a studied contempt for detail. As a lacquer painter he left a strong mark upon the work of his contemporaries and successors. His brother and pupil, Kenzan, adopted his style, and left a reputation as a decorator of pottery hardly less brilliant than Korin's in that of lacquer; and a later follower, Hoitsu (1762-1828), greatly excelled the master in delicacy and refinement, although inferior to him in vigour and invention. Down to the end of this era painting was entirely in the hands of a patrician caste--courtiers, priests, feudal nobles and their military retainers, all men of high education and gentle birth, living in a polished circle. It was practised more as a phase of aesthetic culture than with any utilitarian views. It was a labour of loving service, untouched by the spirit of material gain, conferring upon the work of the older masters a dignity and poetic feeling which we vainly seek in much of the later work. Unhappily, but almost inevitably, over-culture led to a gradual falling-off from the old virility. The strength of Meicho, Sesshu, Motonobu and Tanyu gave place to a more or less