Ukiyo-e 1760–1849
Katsushika Hokusai
葛飾北斎
A self-styled “old man mad about painting” who spent ninety years trying to draw everything under heaven. We handle paintings from his own hand — from the album with which he survived a famine year onward — together with colour-supervised woodblock reprints of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.
Born in Honjo, Edo, in 1760. Trained under Katsukawa Shunshō, he ranged across every subject and style in his ninety years — from graceful Sōri-style beauties to book illustration, color prints and paintings — changing his art name some thirty times, and in old age calling himself Gakyō Rōjin Manji, “the old man mad about painting.”
In 1836 the great Tenpō famine struck Edo and work from the publishers dried up. The album’s title slip records that Hokusai, then seventy-seven, painted this album by hand to make ends meet. The twelve leaves we handle come from that album: everyday foods, utensils and figures, brought to life with the utmost economy of brush.
The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (c. 1831–35) stand at the summit of landscape printmaking, and their influence reached painters far beyond Japan. Every work shown here is available for sale; provenance and condition are provided individually.
《Gathering Shellfish at Low Tide》32.5 × 47.9 cm
Selected Works
Collections
Hokusai: Paintings from His Own Brush
Paintings by the artist's handWorks: 20 (1 sold)
Not prints, but works Hokusai painted with his own brush. Every one the gallery handles, arranged in three formats: album leaves, hanging scrolls and fan paintings.
Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji: The Three Great Views (Woodblock Reprints)
Woodblock reprint, mounted as a hanging scrollWorks: 3
Woodblock reprints of Under the Wave off Kanagawa, Fine Wind, Clear Morning and Rainstorm beneath the Summit, printed by hand in a present-day workshop under the colour supervision of the International Hokusai Society, and mounted as hanging scrolls.
Journal
Article
Hokusai’s fan paintings — three works painted in the shape of a fan
Hokusai’s paintings from his own brush are not confined to hanging scrolls and albums. Fan paintings survive too, painted on paper in the shape of an open folding fan. On a surface bounded by arcs, wide at the top and narrowing towards the bottom, what did Hokusai place, and where? We look at the three fans the gallery handles, one at a time.
Supervised by Yoshihisa Endo, Representative Director, Japan Art Academy
Article
Buying a Hokusai painted by his own hand
Hokusai is known for prints. He also painted directly with the brush — one sheet, one hand, no block between. The gallery currently holds twelve album leaves, five hanging-scroll works in six scrolls, three fan paintings — twenty paintings in all, one of them sold — and three Thirty-six Views reprinted and mounted as scrolls.
Supervised by Yoshihisa Endo, Representative Director, Japan Art Academy
Article
Hokusai's Colours, Brought Back
The colours Hokusai meant us to see can no longer be seen as they were. The International Hokusai Society of the Japan Art Academy supervised the colours, the prints were pulled again with techniques unbroken since Edo, and the three were mounted as hanging scrolls. Here are the colours and the handwork, in pictures.
Supervised by Yoshihisa Endo, Representative Director, Japan Art Academy
Inquiries about the works
We welcome inquiries about exhibiting, acquiring or purchasing. For a particular piece, please write to us from that work's page.