Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849)
Katsushika Hokusai was one of the most talented painters of the last years of the 264-year-long Edo period. He lived to be nearly 90 years old, and worked in many different genres, producing woodblock illustrations for books, nishiki-e, small volumes of sketches which he called Hokusai Manga, and, in his later years, autographed original paintings. In terms of technical prowess, he was not only a master of ukiyoe, but actively studied and was well-versed in the Edo Rimpa style, Chinese painting, Western techniques of perspective, and copper-plate printing. He developed techniques associated with all of these, incorporating them into his own mature style.
Hokusai's most famous set of ukiyoe series, "Thirty-Six Views of Mt. Fuji," was an attempt to show Mt. Fuji from many different angles and in a variety of circumstances. It was, in other words, an experiment in observing and recording -with an intrepid spirit of inquiry- the essence of single object seen in diverse aspects. These pictures' majestic composition and, in many cases, resourceful and even "witty" content, together with Hokusai's powerful brushstrokes, have earned them, still today, many devotees in Japan and throughout the world.
