Arcadópolis
The Great Wave off Kanagawa
Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1830–1832
What you see
A huge wave rears up from the left and curls over the scene, its crest breaking into claws of foam. Three long boats, their rowers crouched low, ride out the swell: one beneath the wave, one on the right and one at bottom center. In the distance, small and snowcapped, Mount Fuji sits almost on the horizon.
Prussian blue in several shades plays against the white foam and the pale beige sky. The lines are crisp and the colors flat. Seek out the small wave in the foreground, which echoes Fuji’s shape, and the drops of spray falling like snowflakes over the mountain.
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
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
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
The Arcadópolis Museum has 443 public-domain works in 40 rooms, free to explore in 3D in your browser.