Various water landscapes drawn by Hokusai’s outstanding technique

At the Sumida Hokusai Museum, the exhibition “Phantasmagoric! Hokusai’s Water Wonderland” will be held from April 24 to June 10, 2018.
Under the Wave off Kanagawa, from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, is an iconic work known and loved the world around as The Great Wave. Hokusai’s depiction of that dynamic wave is, moreover, only one of his many works addressing the many faces of water. Portraying water, the shape-changer, is not simple, but Hokusai was able to capture its elusively decisive moments. His many works expressing the lively, fleeting movements of water speak of his acute powers of observation and his mastery of a broad range of painting techniques. What also enabled him to work in this way was his experience of residing in the Sumida area, with all its rivers and canals, and observing the flow, the rise and fall of the Sumida River and other watercourses day by day.
Under the Wave off Kanagawa, from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji will be on view throughout the exhibition period. The prints in his A Tour of the Waterfalls in Various Provinces, a thematic series of waterfalls throughout Japan, will be split between the first and second halves of the exhibition period.

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