The Great Wave off Kanagawa is a woodblock print by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai, probably in late 1831, during the Edo period of Japanese history
The print depicts three ships moving through a storm-tossed sea, with a large wave forming a spiral in the center and Mount Fuji visible in the background.
The print is Hokusai’s best-known work and the first of his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series, in which the use of Prussian blue revolutionized Japanese prints
The composition of The Great Wave is a synthesis of traditional Japanese prints and Western perspective, and earned him immediate success in Japan and later in Europe, where it inspired the Impressionists. Several museums around the world own copies of The Great Wave, many of which come from private collections of 19th-century Japanese prints.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa has been described as “possibly the most reproduced image in the history of art,” as well as being one of the“most famous works of art in Japanese history.” It has influenced several notable artists and musicians, including Vincent van Gogh, Claude Debussy, Claude Monet and Hiroshige.
Who is the author of the Great Wave?
Katsushika Hokusai was born in Katsushika, Japan, in 1760, in a district east of Edo. He was the son of a shogun’s mirror maker and at the age of 14 was named Tokitarō. Hokusai was never recognized as an heir; it is likely that his mother was a concubine.
Hokusai began painting at the age of six, and at twelve his father sent him to work in a bookstore. At sixteen, he became an apprentice engraver, a position in which he remained for three years, while beginning to create his own illustrations
At eighteen, Hokusai was accepted as an apprentice to the artist Katsukawa Shunshō, one of the greatest ukiyo-e artists of his time. When Shunshō died in 1793, Hokusai studied Japanese and Chinese styles on his own, as well as some Dutch and French paintings
In 1800, he published Famous Views of the Eastern Capital and Eight Views of Edo, and began taking on apprentices. During this period he began using the name Hokusai; over the course of his life, he would use more than 30 pseudonyms.
In 1804, Hokusai rose to fame when he created a 240-square-meter drawing of a Buddhist monk named Daruma for a festival in Tokyo. Due to his precarious financial situation, in 1812 he published Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing, and began traveling to Nagoya and Kyoto to recruit more students
In 1814, he published the first of 15 mangas; volumes of sketches of subjects that interested him, such as people, animals and Buddha. In the late 1820s he published his famous series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji; it was so popular that he later had to add ten more prints. Hokusai died in 1849 at the age of 89
A bit of history about the Great Wave off Kanagawa
Hokusai faced numerous challenges during the composition of The Great Wave off Kanagawa. In 1826, when he was over sixty years old, he had serious financial problems, apparently a serious health problem. Hokusai probably suffered a stroke in 1827, his wife died the following year, and in 1829 he had to rescue his grandson from financial problems, a situation that led to poverty
Despite sending his grandson to the countryside with his father in 1830, Hokusai’s financial difficulties continued for several years, during which time he was working on Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji.
After several years of work and other drawings, Hokusai arrived at the final design for The Great Wave of Kanagawa in late 1831. There are two similar works from about 30 years before the publication of The Great Wave that can be considered precursors; these are Kanagawa-oki Honmoku no Zu and Oshiokuri Hato Tsusen no Zu, which depict the same subject as The Great Wave: a sailing ship in the first case, and a rowboat in the second, both in the midst of a storm and at the base of a great wave that threatens to engulf them
The Great Wave off Kanagawa demonstrates Hokusai’s skill in drawing. The print, although simple in appearance to the viewer, is the result of a long process of methodical reflection. Hokusai laid the foundation for this method in his 1812 book Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing, in which he said that any object can be drawn using the relationship between the circle and the square
Hokusai took up the image of The Great Wave a few years later, when he made Kaijo no Fuji for the second volume of One Hundred Views of Fuji. This print depicts the same relationship between the wave and the mountain, and the same burst of foam. In Kaijo no Fuji there are no people or boats, and the fragments of the wave coincide with the flight of birds. While the wave in The Great Wave moves in the opposite direction to the Japanese reading-from right to left-the wave and birds in Kaijo no Fuji move in unison.
Details of the Great Wave off Kanagawa
The Great Wave off Kanagawa is a landscape-format yoko-e print that was produced in an ōban size of 25 cm × 37 cm (9.8 in × 14.6 in). The landscape is composed of a stormy sea, three ships, and a mountain. The artist’s signature is visible in the upper left corner.
In the background is Mount Fuji with its snow-capped peak; Mount Fuji is the central figure in the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, which depicts the mountain from different angles. In The Great Wave of Kanagawa, Mount Fuji is depicted in blue with white highlights similarly to the wave in the foreground.
The dark color surrounding the mountain seems to indicate that the painting is set in the early morning hours; the sun is rising from the viewer’s point of view and begins to illuminate the snow-capped peak. There are cumulonimbus clouds between the mountain and the viewer; although these clouds usually indicate a storm, it is not raining on Fuji or in the main scene.
The scene shows three oshiokuri-bune, fast barges that were used to transport live fish from the Izu and Bōsō peninsulas to the markets in Edo Bay.
According to the title of the play, the boats are located in Kanagawa Prefecture, with Tokyo to the north, Mount Fuji to the northwest, Sagami Bay to the south, and Edo Bay to the east. The boats return from the capital facing southwest
Each boat has eight oarsmen holding their oars. At the front of each boat are two other relief crew members; 30 men are depicted in the image, but only 22 are visible
The size of the wave can be approximated by taking the boats as a reference: the oshiokuri-bune were generally between 12 and 15 meters long. Taking into account that Hokusai reduced the vertical scale by 30%, the wave measures between 10 and 12 meters (33 and 39 feet).
The sea dominates the composition, which is based on the shape of a wave that spreads out and dominates the entire scene before falling. At this point, the wave forms a perfect spiral whose center passes through the center of the design, allowing the viewer to see Mount Fuji in the background
The image is composed of curves; the surface of the water is an extension of the curves inside the waves. The foam curves of the big wave generate other curves, which are divided into many small waves that repeat the image of the big wave.
The wave is generally described as that produced by a tsunami, a giant wave or, more likely, a rebel wave, but also as a monstrous or ghostly wave, like a white skeleton that threatens the fishermen with its “claws” of foam.” This interpretation of the work recalls Hokusai’s mastery of Japanese fantasy, which is evident in the ghosts of his Hokusai Manga
An examination of the wave on the left side reveals many more “claws” poised to grab fishermen behind the strip of white foam.
Between 1831 and 1832, Hokusai’s Hyaku Monogatari series, One Hundred Ghost Stories, more explicitly depicts supernatural themes. This image is similar to many of the artist’s earlier works. The silhouette of the wave resembles that of a dragon, which the author frequently depicts, including on Mount Fuji.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa has two inscriptions. The title of the series is written in the upper left corner inside a rectangular frame, which reads,“冨嶽三十六景/神奈冲/浪裏” Fugaku Sanjūrokkei / Kanagawa oki / nami ura, meaning“Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji / On the high seas in Kanagawa / Under the wave”
The inscription to the left of the painting bears the artist’s signature: 北斎改为一笔 Hokusai aratame Iitsu hitsu, which reads as “(painting) from the brush of Hokusai, who changed his name to Iitsu.”
Due to his humble origins, Hokusai had no surname; his first nickname, Katsushika, came from the region he hailed from. Throughout his career, Hokusai used more than 30 names and never began a new cycle of work without changing his name, sometimes leaving his name to his students.
Of particular note is the work of depth and perspective (uki-e) in The Great Wave off Kanagawa; there is a strong contrast between the background and foreground; two large masses dominate the visual space; the violence of the great wave contrasts with the serenity of the empty background, evoking the symbol of yin and yang
Man, powerless, struggles between the two, which may be a reference to Buddhism, in which man-made things are ephemeral, as depicted in the boats swept by the giant wave; and to Shintoism, in which nature is omnipotent.
In which museum is the Great Wave off Kanagawa?
Initially about 1,000 copies of The Great Wave off Kanagawa were printed, which led to attrition in later editions of the printed copies. An estimated 8,000 copies were eventually printed.
As of 2022, about 100 copies of The Great Wave off Kanagawa are known to survive; some of these copies are in the Tokyo National Museum, the Ukiyo-e Museum of Japan in Matsumoto, the British Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Musée des Impressionnismes in Giverny, France, the Musée Guimet, and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.Some private collections, such as the Gale Collection, also have copies of The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
Nineteenth-century private collectors were often the source of museum collections of Japanese prints; for example, the Metropolitan Museum’s copy comes from the former collection of Henry Osborne Havemeyer, which his wife donated to the museum in 1929.The Bibliothèque nationale de France’s copy comes from the collection of Samuel Bing in 1888. The copy in the Musée Guimet is a bequest from Raymond Koechlin, who donated it to the museum in 1932.
Influence on art and popular culture
After the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan ended a long period of isolation and opened its domestic markets to imports from the West. In turn, much Japanese art was exported to Europe and America, and quickly gained popularity
The influence of Japanese art on Western culture became known as Japonisme. Japanese woodcuts inspired Western artists, especially the Impressionists, in many genres.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the most famous Japanese print, influenced great works: in painting, in the works of Claude Monet; in music, in Claude Debussy’s La Mer; and in literature, in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Der Berg.
Claude Debussy, who loved the sea and painted images of the Far East, kept a copy of The Great Wave off Kanagawa in his studio. During his work on La Mer, he was inspired by the engraving and requested that the image be used on the cover of the original 1905 score.
Henri Riviére, a draftsman, engraver and watercolorist, who was also an important figure behind the Parisian entertainment venue Le Chat Noir, was one of the first artists to be greatly influenced by Hokusai’s work, especially The Great Wave off Kanagawa. In homage to Hokusai’s work, Riviére published in 1902 a series of lithographs entitled The Thirty-Six Views of the Eiffel Tower. Riviére was a collector of Japanese engravings who acquired works by Siegfried Bing, Tadamasa Hayashi and Florine Langweil.
Vincent van Gogh was a great admirer of Hokusai; he praised the quality of the drawing and the use of line in The Great Wave off Kanagawa , and said it had a terrifying emotional impact. French sculptor Camille Claudel ‘s La Vague replaced the boats in Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa with three women dancing in a circle.
Many modern artists have reinterpreted and adapted the image. Australian indigenous artist Lin Onus used The Great Wave off Kanagawa as the basis for his 1992 painting Michael and I are just slipping down the pub for a minute
A work called Uprisings by Japanese-American artist Kozyndan is based on the print; the foam of the wave is replaced by rabbits. In computer operating systems designed by Apple , the emoji character of a water wave closely resembles the wave depicted in the engraving.
