Katsushita Hokusai (1760-1849) is perhaps the best known Japanese printmaker in history thus far. Much of his fame comes from the iconic print Great Wave off Kanagawa, which is part of a well-known series of prints entitled Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji (though in fact, the series contains 46 prints), which were intensely popular during the artist’s lifetime and remain so. Mount Fuji was a landmark of great importance, and many artists include Fuji in visual works.
Today’s print is entitled “A view of Mount Fuji across Lake Suwa in Shinano province”. Not only is this print beautiful, but it illustrates some interesting aspects of the production of traditional ukiyo-e woodcut print art. Most commonly, the artist would create an original drawing of the scene on thin paper. The drawing would be glued to a block of wood, and a separate artisan (the woodcarver) would carve out the pattern in the woodblock, destroying the drawing in the process, of course. Then the woodblock would be turned over to a printer for production. For color prints, several woodblocks would be carved, one corresponding to each color in the picture, and they would be printed serially onto individual pieces of paper.
It was pretty common for printmakers to start with a simple color scheme and see how the public liked the picture. If it was popular, they might carve additional blocks to add more colors (and usually had to further carve the original blocks to accomodate the added colors.) This print began life with a mostly blue color scheme, but as it was quite popular, Hokusai reworked it to incorporate a broader palette.
As if that wasn’t complicated enough, often after many printings and/or many years, woodblocks would degrade or break. When that occurred, if additional impressions were desired, someone (often not the original artist) would carve a new block to match the originals.
I am presenting two versions of this print–one printed in 1830 from the original blocks (among the earliest editions, albeit after the color palette had been broadened), and a reproduction (new block carved and printed in 1930, with a fairly different color scheme.) In addition to the differences in the color scheme, the older print seems (to my eye) to show finer details.
A view of Mount Fuji across Lake Suwa in Shinano province
(1830) (1930)
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