Culture and art know no frontiers. Therefore, the extent of the influence Hokusai has had on artists all around the globe, is hard to fathom. What’s granted is that the Japanese artist was probably the most noted author from the ukiyo-e genre.
Ukiyo-e was a kind of artistic current in which artists would resort to woodblock printing as well as painting. Woodblock printing was often used for printing cloth. The subjects of this artistic trend were vast, including history or popular tales, fighting scenes and even sumo wrestlers, as well as female beauty and erotism.
Hokusai’s work was mostly about nature, depicting animals, plants and especially landscapes, as it’s the case with “The Great Wave”. The artist didn’t make much of himself and was regarded as someone modest. However, he became the most influential of all artists of ukiyo-e, with several historians admitting his work probably influenced later European painters such as Claude Monet and Van Gogh. This connection happened during the “Japonisme”, a trend in which European artists were strongly influenced by Japanese aesthetics, whether it was painting, fashion or architecture.
Hokusai was highly regarded by his counterparts for his notion of perspective, for his compositions and even his choice of colours. Hokusai made extensive use of imported Prussian blue, an invented chemical pigment, and indigo.
Despite having such a prolific career, Katsushika Hokusai only became an independent artist in his late 40s, when he stopped teaching to embrace a living as a full-time artist. Commercially oriented, Hokusai sold many low-cost prints and illustrated books to make a living.
As his favourite subject, Hokusai developed a sort of obsession with Mount Fuji, with a great part of his work depicting the mountain as part of every scene. The One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji was one of his projects (composed, actually, by 102 views).
However, “The Great Wave of Kanagawa” belongs to the series “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji”. It has been appointed as probably the most reproduced image in the history of art, which says a lot about its huge popularity.
