The Great Wave off Kanagawa

A woodblock print by Katsushika Hokusai, published around 1831, showing boats dwarfed by a breaking wave with Mount Fuji in the distance. It is the best-known print in his series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji.

Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji: A series of landscape prints by Katsushika Hokusai, including The Great Wave off Kanagawa. The Great Wave is the series’ most famous design and shares its focus on Mount Fuji.
Composition (visual arts): The arrangement of visual elements within an artwork. The wave, boats, and mountain form nested shapes that guide attention across the print.
Katsushika Hokusai: A Japanese artist and printmaker whose work helped shape the global understanding of ukiyo-e. He designed The Great Wave and repeatedly explored landscapes and Mount Fuji.
Japonisme: The nineteenth-century European interest in Japanese art and design that influenced Western artists and collectors. The print became a widely recognized example of the Japanese art that inspired this movement.
Ukiyo-e: A Japanese genre of woodblock prints and paintings that flourished from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. The Great Wave belongs to this print tradition.
Foam (oceanography): A mass of bubbles formed when air becomes trapped in water, including at breaking wave crests. The wave’s claw-like foam fingers make its crest seem both immense and active.
Edo period: The period of Japanese history from 1603 to 1868, when the Tokugawa shogunate ruled from Edo. The print was made during this era of urban growth and expanding print culture.
Impressionism: A nineteenth-century art movement known for visible brushwork and attention to changing light and perception. European artists associated with the movement collected and responded to Japanese prints like Hokusai’s.
Japanese woodblock printing: A printmaking process in which carved wooden blocks transfer ink onto paper, often using separate blocks for different colors. Its carved blocks and layered pigments produced the print’s crisp lines and color fields.
Perspective (visual arts): Methods for representing depth and spatial relationships on a flat surface. Hokusai’s reduced mountain and enlarged foreground wave create dramatic differences in scale.

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