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Rust-red Mount Fuji with snow at the summit, under a blue sky crossed by rows of small white clouds

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.

All 12 works by Katsushika Hokusai

More by Katsushika Hokusai

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