HOKUSAI KATSUSHIKA, One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji no. 86, 1836-1847

Beautiful proof with good contrasts, attributable to the print run of Eirakuya Tōshirō (mid 19th century) from the original woods of the Egawa workshop. Printed on Japanese paper, in excellent condition, with original untrimmed margins beyond the marginal line.

Reasoned Bibliography
H.D. Smith II, Hokusai: One Hundred Views of Mt. Fuji, New York: George Braziller, 1988
M. Forrer, Hokusai, London: Royal Academy of Arts, 1991
M. Forrer, Hokusai, New York: Rizzoli, 1988
M. Forrer, Hokusai: Prints and Drawings, Munich: Prestel, 1991
G.C. Calza, Hokusai: The Old Mad about Painting, Milan 1999-2000, London 2003
G.C. Calza, Hokusai: The One Hundred Views of Fuji, Milan: Editoriale Nuova, 1982
J. Hillier, The Art of Hokusai in Book Illustration, London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1980
J. Hillier, L. Smith, Japanese Prints: 300 Years of Albums and Books, London: British Museum Publications, 1980
R.S. Keyes, Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan, New York: George Braziller, 2006
T. Clark (ed.), Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave, London: British Museum Press, 2017
M. Forrer, W.R. van Gulik, Hokusai and His School: Paintings, Drawings and Illustrated Books, Leiden: Society for Japanese Arts and Crafts, 1991
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/78803

Commentary
The scene depicts two bricklayers at work on a construction site along the banks of the Sumida River, probably in Edo, focused on plastering a building used as a warehouse. The compositional layout is dominated by the complex geometry of the scaffolding, built on a strict cadence of straight lines that gives the image a tight and almost musical rhythm. In contrast to this structural order are the curved and dynamic forms of the workers' bodies, captured at the moment of maximum physical tension: one, below, shoveling the freshly mixed mortar; the other, above, while spreading it with the trowel on the wall, leaving visible the patches of gray plaster still wet.
The contrast between the rigidity of the wooden architecture and the concentrated energy of human gestures enhances the perception of shared effort and the coordination necessary for the work, a theme particularly dear to Hokusai. The representation of the rhythms of collective labor indeed finds significant precedents in other works of his, such as the plate Honjo Tatekawa from the series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, set in a lumber depot in Edo, or the scenes of workers engaged in throwing and arranging groups of tiles in Surugachō. In all these images, Hokusai transforms manual labor into a visual construction of great expressive strength, in which the human gesture becomes a structural element of the landscape.