HOKUSAI KATSUHIKA, One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji n. 40, 1835

Fuji from the sea aka The Great Wave, Kaijo no fuji

Series: One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji , Fugaku Hyakkei
Technique: Sumizuri-e , woodblock prints in two or three shades of gray ( sumi ink)
Format: Hanshibon , open diptych (approximately 183x253 mm)
Signatures: Zen Hokusai Iitsu Aratame Gakyorojin Manji
Artist's seal: Fuji no Yama
Date: Woodcuts engraved between 1834 and 1847; examples printed between 1834 and about 1870
Engravers: Egawa Tomekichi and Egawa Sentarō
Publisher: Eirakuya Tōshirō (Tōshodō), Nagoya

A splendid work with good contrasts, attributable to the Eirakuya Tōshirō print run (mid-19th century) from the original woodcuts from the Egawa workshop. Printed on Japanese paper, in excellent condition, with original margins intact beyond the marginal line.

Annotated 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
GC Calza, Hokusai: the old man crazy about painting , Milan 1999-2000, London 2003
GC Calza, Hokusai: 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

Description
One of the great masterpieces of Japanese art.
On windy days, when the waves rise high and swell, a violent gust can seize the crest of a wave, detaching it from the dark mass and launching it into the sky, transforming it into a lace of foam. The crest, before falling back into the awaiting trough, seems to pause for a moment, frozen in the void. In that timeless instant, tiny bubbles float in space, rising and falling again, and there they are, transformed into a flock of chidores , small plovers born of the ocean and the wind.
The Japanese viewer's eye is accustomed to looking from right to left, so their gaze follows the foam generated by the crashing waves, all the way to the flight of plovers. Nothing is depicted that isn't in motion, even the chidori rising above the final crest, quivering in the wind. A swirling ellipse, from the crest reaching out to the approach of a new wave, a hypnotic whirlwind that grips the viewer and leaves them in awe: there, the only fixed point, is Fuji.
Hokusai painted this phenomenon several times throughout his life, a metaphor for his constant research. The panel, in fact, immediately recalls the famous Kanagawa oki namiura ( The Wave off the Coast of Kanagawa or The Great Wave ) from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and other almost “protohistoric” engravings included in two series of Western-style landscapes ( Kanagawa oki Honmoku no zu , View of Honmoku near Kanazawa, circa 1803; and Oshiokuri hato tsusen no zu , Transport Vessels in the Waves , circa 1805). No other image, however, possesses the same evocative power, the philosophical-religious scope, the architectural structure, the vastness of the pictorial conception.