Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760 – 1849)
Clear Weather, Southern Breeze (Gaifû Kaisei), from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku Sanjûrokkei)
woodcut printed in color on paper
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James Barker (Margaret Clark Rankin, class of 1908) “The Margaret Rankin Barker – Isaac Ogden Rankin Collection of Oriental Art”
Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾北斎) was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter, and printmaker of the Edo period. Born in Edo (now Tokyo), Hokusai is best known as the author of the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景 Fugaku Sanjūroku-kei, c. 1831), containing images of modern facsimile prints made using the same techniques. Although called “36 views”, the series actually consists of 46 designs. Hokusai created the series both as a response to a domestic travel boom and as part of a personal and religious obsession with Mount Fuji.
Clear Weather, Southern Breeze was requested to be included in a show entitled Hokusai: Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, which was on view at the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery from March 10 to June 3, 2012, along with 45 other prints. The show brought together outstanding early impressions if each of the forty-six prints that ultimately comprised the series, together with a few key variants that the comprise the famous series, published in their early 1830s. The exhibition contains some of the best examples of Hokusai’s blue monochromatic prints, created with the European synthetic pigment known as Prussian blue or Berlin blue (beroai), which was introduced to Japanese prints around the time the series was in development.
Different from the later impressions with dark and defined background and vivid colors of the mountain, this early impression of the painting of the first state of the print, is what Hokusai actually saw. The first impression, to me, seems more realistic, and I can imagine the sun makes everything glow before dawn but perceives objects without definite color. The muted colors suggest a calm and serene mental state and that it is a great representation of Hokusai’s belief in clarity, delicacy, and conviction.
Which impression do you prefer?
Read more about Clear Weather, Southern Breeze here.