Mount Fuji with reddish slopes above an almost black base, a zigzag of lightning at lower right and white clouds

Storm below Mount Fuji

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What you see

Fuji crosses the scene on a diagonal, its snowy summit just right of center. Its upper slopes, speckled with reddish dots, darken until the base is almost black. At lower right, jagged zigzag lines cut through the darkness. Behind the mountain, on both sides, rounded white clouds pile up against the blue.

The contrast is strong: the upper half is bright, with blue sky and clouds, the lower half somber. The red of the lightning echoes the mottling on the slope. Watch for the streaks of snow running down from the summit and the small round seal beside the title at upper 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.

All 12 works by Katsushika Hokusai

More by Katsushika Hokusai

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