Arcadópolis
Rōben Waterfall at Ōyama in Sagami Province
Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1827
What you see
The waterfall drops almost straight from the top and splits the scene in two. Pink and green cliffs covered in pines rise on either side. Below, in a pool of churning water, a group of pilgrims in loincloths bathe, holding long wooden poles. Buildings stand on both sides, and on the left a man in a blue robe waits.
The colors are bright and flat: pink, pale green, yellow and the blue of the water, darker behind the falls. The falling water is drawn in parallel bands. Notice the stylized white clouds drifting in from the left, the tiny dots of spray and the lettered lantern hanging on the right.
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
Ejiri in Suruga Province
Sazai Hall at the Temple of the Five Hundred Arhats
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
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