Title: The Great Wave off Kanagawa
Artist: Hokusai, Katsushika
Chronology: 1832
Technique: Polychrome printing

Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji is a serie of 46 prints by Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), whose publication dates ranging from 1831 to 1833. Represent Mount Fuji from different places, depending on the season. This series is now very famous because of the integration on issues of Japanese tradition (many of the oldest artistic representations of Mount Fuji appear to date from the eleventh century) Western modes of representation, especially from the perspective used in the paint Western. Hacia1830, Hokusai probably contacted the publisher Nishimuraya Yohachi presents his project to record a series of large landscape prints in this unique theme. Ten prints appear first: The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Mount Fuji on a clear day and the storm at the summit, often considered the three most famous Japanese prints, whose success was immediate. Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji is one of the first series devoted entirely to the landscape, which revolutionized painting of the time. But while Mount Fuji is the main element of the series, is not the ultimate goal: the focus of these prints is to illustrate the relationship between man and nature: "The theme of the thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji is the relationship between man and nature, and the largest invitation to delve into this topic is precisely where the man is not represented, which does not prevent him from being present through the eye of the beholder (Kenneth White).

Source: Musèe Guimet