Rainstorm Beneath the Summit is one of the prints that puts the huge mountain fully in the foreground, its snowy cap just above the thunder clouds. Harsh, jagged lines of lightening play down towards the bottom right of the picture and the bright, light sky above the peak contrasts sharply with the darkness of the […]
Hokusai’s Phoenix stands out, peaceful and vibrant, magnificent to the very last touch. It’s very well detailed, standing against the dark background, which makes the phoenix’s color pop out bringing the painting to life. Hokusai was commissioned to paint the interiors of several buildings during his later years at Gansho-in in Obuse, Japan, and one […]
In the Edo period in which the artist produced much of his work Nakahara was the point at which pilgrims would leave the Tokaido Highway – stepping onto the Oyama Road en route to the sacred Mount Oyama. Paying homage to a rock at the mountain’s summit called Qyama Sekison to seek crop yielding rains, […]
The Fuji from Gotenyama at Shinagawa on the Tokaido is a view of Mount Fuji from the Tokaido Highway. The print is one of a series of woodblock prints called Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji. Despite its name, the series however has 46 blocks, since ten were added at a later date to the […]
The Japanese artist and printmaker, Katsushika Hokusai, painted Kirifuri Waterfall at Kurokami Mountain in Shimotsuke during 1832. This waterfall painting was created during the Edo era between 1760–1849. Katsushika Hokusai was an influential and leading artist during his artistic lifetime in Japan. He was born and raised in Edo, which today we know as Tokyo. […]
The mention of the Volcano Mount Fuji in the art history of Japan was very popular due to its cultural and religious significance. Katsushika Hokusai himself had a huge obsession with this mountain based on the tradition that the mountain was a secret to immortality. Hokusai, therefore, came up with the Ukiyo series that had […]
Shunga is a form of Japanese art, more precisely erotic art. The literal translation of the term Shunga is picture of spring. The word spring was often used to refer to sex. A Shunga picture usually takes the form of a woodblock print. Like most Japanese artists Hokusai produced a number of Shunga albums during […]
At first glance, Hokusai’s Orange Orchids seems to be quite rudimentary -one might even say primitive – when compared to the rest of the often highly detailed works that form Hokusai’s canon. That it is such a departure from the rest of his work, however, is precisely what makes Orange Orchids such a meritorious and […]
A master during his own lifetime, Hokusai’s paintings peaked during the last 30 years of his life with a selection of his most famous artwork included in this section. The Great Wave of Kanagawa continues to spearhead the artist’s reputation, but there is so much more to see in this extensive career. Katsushika Hokusai produced portraits and […]
Feminine Wave is an artwork by the Japanese master artist Hokusai. Hokusai is best known for his woodblock paintings and, though he lived back in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he is still considered one of the finest woodblock artists that the world has ever seen. In the period between 1829 and 1832, he painted […]