Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849) was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period. [1] He is best known for the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, which includes The Great Wave off Kanagawa, and his work strongly influenced European art after Japan reopened to foreign trade. [2]
Early life and training
Hokusai was born in the Honjo district of Edo, now Tokyo, in late 1760, and was reportedly adopted into the family of a mirror maker. [1] He worked in a bookshop and as an apprentice wood-carver before entering the studio of the ukiyo-e master Katsukawa Shunshō at about the age of eighteen.
Under Shunshō he produced actor prints in the studio's established manner. After his teacher's death he broke with the Katsukawa school and began studying other traditions, including Kanō painting and the Western perspective techniques then reaching Japan through Dutch trade — an unusually wide range of study for an ukiyo-e artist. [2]
Mature work
Hokusai changed his artistic name repeatedly over his career, a practice he took further than most Japanese artists, with each name marking a new phase of style or subject. From 1814 he issued the Hokusai Manga, a multi-volume compendium of thousands of sketches of people, animals, landscapes, tools and imaginary creatures that circulated widely and served as a drawing manual. [3]
He worked across genres — surimono prints, book illustration, bird-and-flower studies, ghost imagery and large painted scrolls — but his decisive contribution was to landscape. Where ukiyo-e had centred on actors and courtesans, Hokusai made landscape a leading subject of the popular print. [2]
Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
Around 1830 to 1832, when he was in his seventies, Hokusai produced Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the series on which his fame chiefly rests. It was eventually expanded to forty-six prints and shows the mountain from varying distances, seasons and social settings. [1]
The series made extensive use of imported Prussian blue pigment, whose deep tones gave the prints a distinctive palette. The Great Wave has become one of the most widely reproduced images in art history, held in collections including the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. [4] He followed it with A Tour of the Waterfalls of the Provinces and One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji.
Later years and legacy
Hokusai continued working into extreme old age, insisting that his skill was still improving and that his best work lay ahead. He died in Asakusa, Edo, on 10 May 1849. [1] His daughter Katsushika Ōi was herself an accomplished painter who assisted in his studio.
When Japanese prints reached Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century, they contributed to the enthusiasm known as Japonisme, affecting artists such as Monet, Degas, Van Gogh and Whistler, and influencing Art Nouveau design. [3] Hokusai's compositions remain central to the global reception of Japanese art.
