
South Wind, Clear Sky (Red Fuji)
Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1830–1832
What you see
The mountain fills nearly the whole right half, rising in a clean diagonal from the lower left corner to the summit. Its red slope darkens toward the top, where snow runs down in white streaks. On the left, the sky fills with rows of small clouds, and at the foot of the mountain a forest is drawn as a carpet of tiny green flecks.
Three colors are enough: the warm red of the mountain, the deep blue of the sky and the blue-green of the forest, which lightens toward the bottom. Watch for the title cartouche and signature at upper left, and two small round marks on the left margin.
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
Storm below Mount Fuji
Fujimigahara in Owari Province
Ejiri in Suruga 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
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