The Great Wave off Kanagawa

Katsushika Hokusai's 'Under the Wave off Kanagawa' (c. 1831), the most celebrated print of his series 'Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji', captures the split-second in which a vast wave curls over three fast freight boats, its foam clawing at the sky while the pale silhouette of Mount Fuji rides quietly in the trough below. Hokusai's use of Prussian blue and his engagement with Dutch-derived perspective gave the image its unmistakable foreignness within Japan — and its appeal outside it: the print would go on to shape Impressionism, Art Nouveau, Debussy's 'La Mer', and the very idea of Japanese art in the West.

Exhibition Venue

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Manhattan, United States