
Ejiri in Suruga Province
Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1830–1832
What you see
A path winds through a plain of reeds from the lower left corner toward the right. Several travelers push forward, bent against the wind: some clutch their hats, one covers his head, and on the left a figure grips a flapping robe beside two thin trees bending in the gusts. Behind, Fuji is just a fine outline, and the sky fills with leaves.
Blue-green reeds and a beige sky dominate, the sky turning a brownish pink toward the top. The orange hats are the liveliest notes. Seek out the small orange structure among the reeds right of center, perhaps a shrine, and the tiny figure walking alone on the left.
About Katsushika Hokusai
Katsushika Hokusai was born in Edo, today’s Tokyo, in 1760 and died there in 1849, after a long career as a painter, book illustrator and designer of woodblock prints. When he was about seventy he created “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”, whose bright imported Prussian blue helped make landscape prints popular in Japan. Its most famous image, “The Great Wave”, became an icon of world art, and his daughter Katsushika Ōi, who worked by his side, was a remarkable painter too.
More by Katsushika Hokusai
The Great Wave off Kanagawa
South Wind, Clear Sky (Red Fuji)
Storm below Mount Fuji
Fujimigahara in Owari Province
Sazai Hall at the Temple of the Five Hundred Arhats
Rōben Waterfall at Ōyama in Sagami Province
Kintai Bridge in Suō Province
Cranes on Branch of Snow-covered Pine
Grasshopper and Iris
Poem by Empress Jitō
Chinese Boys Learning to Write and Paint
The Arcadópolis Museum has 443 public-domain works in 40 rooms, free to explore in 3D in your browser.