Hokusai — Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
The three most famous prints from Hokusai's great series, reproduced whole from museum impressions.
3 prints · printed to order on heavyweight matte paper · framed or unframed
The series
Katsushika Hokusai published the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji between about 1830 and 1832, when he was in his seventies, with the Edo publisher Nishimura Yohachi. The mountain appears in every print, sometimes filling the sheet and sometimes a small cone on the horizon behind fishermen, travellers or a wave. The set sold so well that ten more views were added, so the series actually runs to forty-six. It was the first Japanese print series to use Prussian blue, a pigment newly imported from Europe, and that blue is the colour of the Great Wave.
The prints here
Under the Wave off Kanagawa, the Great Wave; Fine Wind, Clear Morning, known as Red Fuji; and Rainstorm Beneath the Summit, known as Black Fuji. The three are the series' best-known images and are usually hung together.
Hanging the set
All three are landscape format, the standard ōban sheet of roughly 10 by 15 inches, so they print at 18×12, 24×16 or 36×24. Three in a row at 24×16, matched slim black frames, is the arrangement they were made for. The Great Wave is also offered edge to edge and on canvas.