We just started a new project this week. We are going to do watercolors of The Great Wave.
The Great Wave off Kanagawa
by Hokusai
1829-1832
History:
The
Great Wave off Kanagawa is
woodblock print by Japanese artist Hokusai, published sometime
between 1830 and 1833 in the late Edo period as the first
print in Hokusai's series Thirty-six Views
of Mount Fuji. It is Hokusai's most famous work,
and one of the best recognized works
of Japanese art in the world. It depicts an enormous wave threatening boats off
the coast of
the prefecture
of Kanagawa.
While sometimes assumed to be a tsunami,
the wave is, as the picture's
title notes, more likely to be a large rogue wave. As in all the
prints in the series, it depicts
the area around Mount Fuji
under particular conditions, and the mountain itself appears in the
background.
Hokusai
was born in 1760, in Katsushika,a
district in the east of Edo (now Tokyo) . His birth name was
Tokitarō, and he was the son of a mirror
maker to the shōgun.
He
started painting when he was six years old and at twelve his father sent him to work at a booksellers.
At sixteen, he was apprenticed as an engraver and spent three years learning
the trade.
At the same time he began to produce his own illustrations. At eighteen he was
accepted as
an apprentice to the artist Katsukawa Shunshō,
one of the foremost ukiyo-e artists of the time. After
a year, his master gave him the name Shunrō, the name he used to sign his first
works in 1779.
Shunshō
died in 1793, so by himself Hokusai began to study distinct Japanese and Chinese styles
and some Dutch and French painting.
Look
at Reference Questions:
Why
do you see in this painting?
Do
you see Mount Fuji?
What
kind of lines do you see?
How
does this painting make you feel?
This
painting is a woodblock print. Do you know what that is?
