Fine Wind, Clear Morning

Fine Wind, Clear Morning comes from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the print series Hokusai made in his early seventies. The series sold so well that the publisher added ten more prints, bringing the total to 46. Like all Japanese woodblock prints, it was made by gluing the artist's drawing onto a block of wood, carving it away, and printing each colour from its own block. Hokusai made heavy use of Prussian blue, a pigment that had only recently arrived in Japan from Europe. In Japan this print is known as Aka Fuji, or Red Fuji, and it is valued there even more highly than his famous Great Wave from the same series. Hokusai was born in Edo, now Tokyo, in 1760 and kept working until he died at 88, producing more than 30,000 paintings, drawings and prints. His landscapes later reached Europe, where they influenced painters such as Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh.