Hokusai

Hokusai's "Great Wave," a print that frames a distant view of the sacred Mount Fuji in the arc of a monumental wave, is one of the most famous images in world art. Created in the 1830s when Hokusai was over seventy years old, the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji was one of several outstanding series of color woodblock prints
nation. The sacred Mount Fuji, waterfalls, birds, flowers, and poets are the subjects of Hokusai's last major color prints. All are memorable images that re-established his fame in the competitive artistic environment of late Edo-period Japan (1615-1868). External forces already in motion at the time of Hokusai's death in 1849 propelled Japan from more than two centuries of isolation into a period of rapid transformation to a modern world power. By the end of the nineteenth century, Hokusai's prints, printed books, and his lesser-known paintings had established his reputation in Europe and America as Japan's most renowned and admired artist.
Hokusai's achievement as a designer of commercial and privately commissioned prints, as an illustrator of printed books, and as a painter is explored in depth in Hokusai, the catalogue of an exhibition co-organized by the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Inc., in cooperation with the Tokyo National Museum.
Featured for the first time since 1960, the two hundredth anniversary of Hokusai's birth, is a substantial selection from the Freer gallery's extraordinary collection of paintings by Hokusai, which was assembled mainly by the American collector and philanthropist Charles Lang Freer (1854-1919). Hokusai marks the one hundredth anniversary of Freer's gift of his collection and a museum to the United States. This volume, organized by subject, and fully illustrated in color, presents an unusual opportunity to appreciate Hokusai's stylistic versatility, technical skill, and originality in various media and periods of his long and prolific career.