Outside of Japan, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is probably the best-known Japanese artist, and his "The Great Wave off Kanawa" is probably the best-known Japanese artwork in all categories. In Japan of his time, he was not nearly as well known as, for example, Kunisada or Utamaro, but posterity considers him one of the greatest ukiyo-e masters. Internationally, he influenced the French impressionists and many other European artists, not at least within Art Nouveau - or Jugendstil, as it was called in Germany.
Hokusai, who during his life used more than 30 different pseudonyms, started painting at the age 6. Between age 14 and 18 he was apprenticed to a woodcarver, and after that he studied under Katsukawa Shunshō. He stayed with the Katsukawa school until Shunshō's death in 1793, but was expelled by Shunshō's successor, Shunkō. After that he did not really belong to any specific school or style, except for a brief association with the Tawaraya school. He absorbed influences from all sides, also from Chinese and European painting.
His works include all ukiyo-e genres and many styles. Hokusai was innovative and can be said to have created the landscape as a sub-genre of ukiyo-e, a sub-genre that Hiroshige took over and perfected. He also created something called Hokusai Manga, a book series of sketches and drawings; and etehon, instruction manuals in art, the first of which was "Quick course in simplified drawing" from 1812.
Hokusai Manga (1814-1834) is a series of 15 books with sketches and drawings. They can be used as a pictorial encyclopedia of Japan of the times and contain many sorts of pictures and motives. Seen as one "corpus", Hokusai Manga is a masterpiece and an important historical document. (There are doubts whether the 15th volume was indeed created by Hokusai.)
In contrast to common claims, Hokusai did not invent the artistic style and form that is known as Manga today. He called his sketches “manga” and several later artists also came to create their own collections of manga. It is possible that this art had some influence on the development of modern manga, but to say that Hokusai would have invented modern manga is to take it too far.
Hokusai's most famous work is the great series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, (1823-1829) of which The Great Wave of Kanawa is a part. It was his breakthrough to a wide audience and the basis for his international fame. The series, a huge success, directly inspired Hiroshige to do a similar series and moved ukiyo-e in a new direction. Yakusha-e (portraits of kabuki actors) and bijinga (beautiful women) would never again dominate ukiyo-e as before. The original series consisted of 36 prints, but Hokusai later added 10.
Another masterpiece of landscape prints was created in 1834 and on, the series (in three books) One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji. In my opinion, technically and artistically, Hokusai's greatest creation.
Hokusai was playful and innovative, and experimented with a variety of motives, materials, styles, techniques, etc. Perhaps he was the most versatile artist within ukiyo-e.
Let us end this with Hokusai's own words:
"All I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes and insects. In consequence when I am eighty, I shall have made still more progress. At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at one hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvellous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive. I beg those who live as long as I to see if I do not keep my word. Written at the age of seventy five by me, once Hokusai, today Gwakyo Rojin, the old man mad about drawing."
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Well written.go ahead.