HOKUSAI KATSUSHIKA, One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji No. 102, 1834

A splendid proof with good contrasts, attributable to the Eirakuya Tōshirō edition (mid-19th century) from the original blocks of the Egawa workshop. Printed on Japanese paper, in excellent condition, with original untrimmed margins 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
G.C. Calza, Hokusai: il vecchio pazzo per la pittura, Milan 1999-2000, London 2003
G.C. Calza, Hokusai: le cento vedute del 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
An authentic graphic marvel and a pictorial masterpiece, in which the essential and stark line of Fuji flows seamlessly into the fullness of the low clouds, completing its vision. It is the simplest and, precisely for this reason, the most evocative synthesis of the "unparalleled" mountain: as Calza observes, it seems that Hokusai, after having studied every possible manifestation of it, came to express it with that artistic maturity of extreme essentiality and rigor that he himself hoped to achieve in very old age.
The print is made with the "one-stroke brush drawing" technique, typical of the Edo painters' repertoire and in which Hokusai excelled, as also demonstrated by the sheets of the Ippitsu gafu of 1823. Ideally following the path of the brushstroke, one starts from a pool of ink at the bottom, climbs in a jagged movement that gradually tapers, frees oneself from the clouds to soar towards the summit of Fuji, plunges into the crater and finally descends to a conclusion on the opposite side.
This technical virtuosity, although based on a common expedient, acquires here a deeper conclusive value: the unique trace of the mountain can be read in parallel with the entire arc of Hokusai's artistic life: beginning with a long apprenticeship, continuing through irregular growth up to the great book illustrations and landscapes of the 1830s, symbolically culminating precisely in the One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, and finally descending, still energetic, towards the end. Even in reaching the summit where the elixir of the immortals is located, the very form of the mountain inevitably imposes a final descent.