Fine Japanese Art
Fine Japanese Art
THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (1760–1849), EDO PERIOD, 19TH CENTURY | UNDER THE WAVE OFF KANAGAWA (KANAGAWA-OKI NAMI-URA), ALSO KNOWN AS THE GREAT WAVE
Auction Closed
November 5, 04:06 PM GMT
Estimate
300,000 - 400,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (1760–1849), EDO PERIOD, 19TH CENTURY
UNDER THE WAVE OFF KANAGAWA (KANAGAWA-OKI NAMI-URA), ALSO KNOWN AS THE GREAT WAVE
woodblock print: ink and colour on paper, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjûrokkei), signed Hoksai aratame Iitsu hitsu, published by Nishimura Yohachi (Eijudo), circa 1830–31
Horizontal ôban:
24.5 x 37 cm., 9⅝ x 14½ in.
Recently it was convincingly suggested by Martin Bailey that van Gogh could have drawn visual inspiration from Hokusai’s print of the crushing Great Wave for the swirling of the sky in Starry Night (FIG. xx), one of his most iconic landscapes, painted during his time at the mental asylum in Saint-Rémy. In the summer of 1888 van Gogh had written passionately to his brother that “Hokusai makes you cry out the same thing — but in his case with his lines, his drawing, […] these waves are claws, the boat is caught in them, you can feel it. Ah well, if we made the colour very correct or the drawing very correct, we wouldn’t create those emotions (letter 676 to Theo van Gogh).”
The same print is in numerous museum collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession no. 06.1283, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession no. JP2569, and the British Museum, accession no. 1937,0710,0.147.