The Great Wave off Kanagawa

The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Japanese: 神奈川沖浪裏, Hepburn: Kanagawa-oki Nami Ura; lit. ‘Under the Wave off Kanagawa‘)^[a] is a woodblock print by the Japanese ukiyo-e artist Hokusai (1760–1849), created in late 1831 during the Edo period of Japanese history. The print depicts three boats moving through a storm-tossed sea, with a large, cresting wave forming a spiral in the centre over the boats and Mount Fuji in the background.

The print is Hokusai’s best-known work and the first in his series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, in which the use of Prussian blue revolutionised Japanese prints. The composition of The Great Wave is a synthesis of traditional Japanese prints and use of graphical perspective developed in Europe, and earned him immediate success in Japan and later in Europe, where Hokusai’s art inspired works by the Impressionists. Several museums throughout the world hold copies of The Great Wave, many of which came from 19th-century private collections of Japanese prints. Only about 100 prints, in varying conditions, are thought to have survived into the 21st century.

The Great Wave off Kanagawa has been described as “possibly the most reproduced image in the history of all art”, as well as being a contender for the “most famous artwork in Japanese history”. This woodblock print has influenced several Western artists and musicians, including Claude Debussy, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. Hokusai’s younger colleagues Hiroshige and Utagawa Kuniyoshi were inspired to make their own wave-centric works.

Ukiyo-e is a Japanese printmaking technique which flourished in the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings of subjects including female beauties; kabuki actors and sumo wrestlers; scenes from history and folk tales; travel scenes and landscapes; Japanese flora and fauna; and erotica. The term ukiyo-e (浮世絵) translates as “picture[s] of the floating world”.

After Edo (called Tokyo since 1868) became the seat of the ruling Tokugawa shogunate in 1603, the chōnin class of merchants, craftsmen and workers benefited most from the city’s rapid economic growth, and began to indulge in and patronise the entertainment of kabuki theatre, geisha, and courtesans of the pleasure districts. The term ukiyo came to describe this lifestyle. Printed or painted ukiyo-e works were popular with the chōnin class, who had become wealthy enough to afford to decorate their homes with them.

The earliest ukiyo-e works, Hishikawa Moronobu’s paintings and monochromatic prints of women, emerged in the 1670s color prints were introduced gradually, and at first were only used for special commissions. By the 1740s artists such as Okumura Masanobu used multiple woodblocks to print areas of color. In the 1760s the success of Suzuki Harunobu’s “brocade prints” led to full-color production becoming standard, with ten or more blocks used to create each print. Some ukiyo-e artists specialised in creating paintings, but most works were prints. Artists rarely carved their own woodblocks; production was divided between the artist, who designed the prints; the carver, who cut the woodblocks; the printer, who inked and pressed the woodblocks onto hand-made paper; and the publisher who financed, promoted, and distributed the works. As printing was done by hand, printers were able to achieve effects impractical with machines, such as the blending or gradation of colors on the printing block.

(Source: For text Wikipedia was consulted)