Katsushika Hokusai (public domain)

The Great Wave

The wave stands tall and does not fall. The Great Wave holds the sea at its highest moment — motion frozen just before it breaks. Power you can keep on the desk without getting wet.

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The work

Katsushika Hokusai (public domain)

The Great Wave

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) was a Japanese painter, draftsman, and printmaker of the ukiyo-e school whose career spanned more than seventy years. He studied with Katsukawa Shunshō, worked under more than thirty art names, and repeatedly changed his style as he explored prints, paintings, illustrated books, and drawing manuals. His best-known landscape series, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, includes Under the Wave off Kanagawa—The Great Wave—made around 1830–32. Its daring perspective and Prussian-blue palette helped make Hokusai one of Edo-period Japan's defining visual artists.

classic · japanese · ocean

Meet the artists