Japanese · Ukiyo-e
Katsushika Hokusai
b. 1760, Edo (Tokyo), Japan — d. 10 May 1849, Edo (Tokyo)
Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) was the Japanese ukiyo-e artist behind The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Over a seventy-year career in Edo he made prints, paintings and illustrated books that later reshaped Western art.
1 work in the collection
Works by Katsushika Hokusai
Katsushika Hokusai was a painter, draftsman and print designer who worked in Edo, today's Tokyo, for some seventy years. He is best known for The Great Wave off Kanagawa (c. 1830–32), the first and most famous sheet of his series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, and impressions of it are held by museums around the world.
Life in brief
Hokusai was born in 1760 in the Katsushika district of Edo, the name he later adopted. As a teenager he trained as a woodblock carver, and around 1778 he entered the studio of the ukiyo-e master Katsukawa Shunshō, designing actor prints under the name Shunrō. He changed names more than thirty times over his life, often with each new phase of work, and in old age signed himself Gakyō Rōjin, “old man mad about painting.” He moved house, by tradition, dozens of times, lived much of his life in poverty, and worked until his death in 1849, aged 88. His daughter Katsushika Ōi, a gifted painter herself, assisted him in his later years.
Style and key works
Hokusai worked across every format the city's print trade offered: single-sheet prints, surimono greeting prints, illustrated novels and painting manuals. The Hokusai Manga, whose volumes began appearing in 1814, are sketchbooks of people, animals, plants and phantoms that became a visual encyclopedia for later artists.
The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, issued around 1830–32 when he was about seventy, made landscape a leading subject of ukiyo-e. The series exploited a newly affordable imported pigment, Prussian blue, which gives the Great Wave its deep, saturated sea. Other famous sheets include Fine Wind, Clear Morning (the “Red Fuji”) and Thunderstorm Beneath the Summit. He followed them with One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji (1834–35), a set of illustrated books.
Influence
After Japan's ports opened in the 1850s, Hokusai's prints and books reached Europe and fed the craze called Japonisme. Claude Monet, who collected Japanese prints and built a Japanese footbridge over his pond at Giverny, and Vincent van Gogh both learned from his flat colors, bold outlines and cropped compositions.
Where to see his work
Impressions of the Great Wave are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago and many other collections; because prints are light-sensitive they are shown only in rotation. The Sumida Hokusai Museum in Tokyo is devoted to him. See also Famous Paintings.
Questions & answers
What is Hokusai most famous for?
Hokusai is most famous for The Great Wave off Kanagawa, a color woodblock print of about 1830–32 from his series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. He is also known for the Hokusai Manga sketchbooks and for other Fuji landscapes such as the Red Fuji.
Where can I see the original Great Wave?
There is no single original: the Great Wave is a woodblock print made in an edition of thousands. Fine early impressions are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the British Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others. Because prints fade in light, museums display them only occasionally.
How old was Hokusai when he made The Great Wave?
Hokusai was about seventy when the Great Wave was published around 1830–32. He was born in 1760 and kept working until his death in 1849, aged 88, saying he hoped to become a true artist if he lived longer.