Irises with pale petals and long sword-like leaves against a blue ground, with a grasshopper among the stems

Grasshopper and Iris

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What you see

A clump of irises fills the print from side to side, seen very close up, as if from ground level. Long, sharp leaves rise and bend in every direction, and among them open flowers with ruffled petals. Near the center, almost hidden, a grasshopper clings to a stem, its antennae long and thin. At upper right there is a vertical signature with two seals.

The background shifts from a pale bluish grey at the top to deep blue at the bottom. The petals are a golden beige with dark blue markings, and the green leaves are lined with fine parallel strokes. Keep an eye out for the grasshopper’s legs and the leaf that curls almost to the right edge.

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.

All 12 works by Katsushika Hokusai

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