Katsushika Hokusai

Katsushika Hokusai the Japanese painter and printmaker of the Edo period (1760-1849), the most versatile and prolific master of the ukiyo-e tradition and the creator of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. His long career transformed the woodblock print and exerted a profound influence on the development of European art in the nineteenth century.

Life and Apprenticeship

Hokusai was born in Edo, modern Tokyo, in 1760 and is believed to have been the son of a craftsman who made mirrors. He was adopted into the Nakajima family and worked in a bookshop and as a woodblock carver before entering the studio of Shunsho, a leading painter and print designer of the Katsukawa school, at about the age of eighteen.

Under Shunsho he learned the conventions of actor prints and illustrated books, and he took the name Shunro. After his master's death he left the school and worked in a variety of styles, associating with other masters and studying Western techniques and Chinese painting. His restless experimentation with new names and manners was itself a mark of his ambition to escape the formulas of any single school.

He moved house many times and was apparently indifferent to comfort, devoting himself wholly to drawing. He is said to have produced tens of thousands of designs and to have illustrated hundreds of books. In his postscript to a famous collection he described himself as a man obsessed with painting, and he claimed that only in his final decades did he begin to understand the true form of things.

Manga, Illustrated Books and Surimono

Hokusai's output ranged far beyond the single sheet print. He illustrated novels, poetry anthologies, pattern books and manuals, and he produced surimono, privately commissioned prints of great refinement made for poetry clubs. These works display the precision of his line and his gift for delicate colour and design.

His Hokusai Manga, a collection of sketches published from 1814 onward, gathered drawings of people, animals, plants, ghosts and objects in every conceivable posture and state. Intended partly as a drawing manual, it became immensely popular and spread his fame to a wide public. Its lively observation of movement and gesture influenced later artists in Japan and abroad.

He also painted hanging scrolls, screens and large-scale works on paper with a freedom and boldness that his prints could not match. The great Daruma and the images of waterfalls, bridges and tigers show his command of brush and ink and his lifelong study of the living form.

Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji

The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, published from about 1830 to 1833, is Hokusai's most famous achievement. In these prints the sacred mountain is shown from many viewpoints and in many seasons, sometimes dominating the scene and sometimes a distant presence behind ordinary life. The series made the landscape print a central genre of ukiyo-e.

The most celebrated image is the Great Wave off Kanagawa, in which a towering wave, its crest breaking into claws of foam, threatens three boats while Fuji sits small and still in the distance. The print is a masterpiece of dramatic design, contrasting the violence of the sea with the calm of the mountain and the smallness of human beings before nature.

Other designs in the series, such as Red Fuji and Thunderstorm beneath the Summit, show his genius for colour and composition. The series was so successful that it was extended beyond the planned thirty-six, and it was followed by other landscape sets including the One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji in book form. Through these works Fuji became an enduring emblem of Japan.

Late Work and Mature Style

In his seventies and eighties Hokusai continued to innovate. He produced the One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse, in which each print illustrates a classical verse through lively scenes of daily life, and the series of large flower and bird prints that are among his most beautiful designs.

His late paintings became increasingly free and vigorous, achieving an economy of means that suggests immense experience. He worked in a wide variety of formats, from small surimono to huge festival paintings, and he remained productive almost to the end of his life.

He died in Edo in 1849 at the age of eighty-nine. According to a widely repeated account, his last words regretted that heaven had not granted him more years, for he believed that at ninety or a hundred his hand would finally have grasped the truth of nature. The legend captures the restless striving that defines his art.

Influence in Japan and Abroad

Within Japan Hokusai's influence was felt in printmaking, painting and illustration, and his Manga and manuals taught generations of artists and craftsmen. His range and industry made him a model of the professional artist who could work in every medium and for every kind of patron.

Abroad his impact was even greater. Japanese prints reached Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century and were eagerly collected, and Hokusai's linear energy and bold design appealed strongly to artists seeking alternatives to academic conventions. His work was admired by the Impressionists and by the designers of the Art Nouveau.

The Great Wave has become one of the most reproduced images in the world, an emblem of Japan and of the power of the print. His example helped to shape the modern understanding of composition, pattern and the graphic line, and it secured for ukiyo-e a place among the great traditions of world art.

See also

• Ukiyo-e
• The Great Wave off Kanagawa
• Edo period
• Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji