![]() To find out more about Hokusai and see the Great Wave, explore our past exhibition Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything, which ran from 30 September 2021 to 30 January 2022. Zoom in to this incredible work using Collection online. We may never know… but I hope that the next time you come across an image of the Great Wave, you will take time to look carefully, and see if you can spot any differences. Another possibility is that he had to commission cheap woodblocks because he didn't have the resources for high quality ones anymore. Maybe Nishimuraya sold the woodblocks to another publisher with lower standards. According to a letter dated 1836, he experienced economic difficulties in the mid-1830s so this might provide an explanation. ![]() The reason for carving this new woodblock remains a mystery, but I find it fascinating that, even when the woodblocks were very damaged, there were still people wanting to buy a print of the Great Wave!Ī woodblock is carved as part of our 2017 documentary on Hokusai.īut the publisher of the Great Wave, Nishimuraya Yohachi, was recognised for having a very high standard of carving and printing, so this lack of care would be surprising. There are signs of woodblock wear in all the expected areas and the printmaker had used a new woodblock for the boats to print them in pink. To be more precise, they are the very last printings of the Great Wave. Nevertheless, when I examined these four prints in detail, I came to the conclusion that they are indeed originals. The Art Institute of Chicago 1952.343, CC0 Public Domain Designation) were not printed with the same woodblock as in early printings (right: British Museum 2008,3008.1.JA).įinally, I came across four prints that look completely different from all the others and ones that I had never encountered before starting this research – the boats were pink and the clouds were printed dark brown with a gradation effect (below). ![]() Under the Wave off Kanagawa ( Kanagawa oki nami ura), 1830/33. Light blue areas in late impressions (left: Katsushika Hokusai. Note how different this late printing looks compared to the early printing – the sky is much more colourful and the printmaker has inked the grey woodblock in such a way as to depict rain in the sky, which is incredibly rare. You can see the location and the order in which the losses took place on a late printing below. ![]() I noticed that breaks in the keyblock also occurred in the outline of Mount Fuji in the background and in the outline of a wave on the right. Later on, the publisher (whose role was to commission and sell prints) would make changes in order to appeal to more customers or lower the cost of production. Early printings are very important as experts believe that the artists only chose the colours and printing effects for these prints. The print of the Great Wave in the first image of this blog has no breaks in its outlines – it is an early printing. Compare the pristine cartouche on the left with the three breaks in the cartouche on the right. Over time, the ridges of the title cartouche in the Great Wave suffered damage in three areas. later prints made with a different set of woodblocks) that were falsely labelled as originals, but that is another story. During the detective work I also came across some reproductions (i.e. In total, I managed to obtain photographs of 111 original prints. I found several photographs of the Great Wave using the Google Arts & Culture and online on Flickr, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram and even TripAdvisor (the Great Wave is very popular on social media!). I also examined books and approached art dealers and private collectors. I consulted the online collections of numerous museums, galleries and libraries as well as the records of major auction houses. To study the evolution of the design of the print, I have been searching for surviving impressions. Therefore, it is likely that the majority of the prints of the Great Wave have been lost, so we have a limited number that we can compare and analyse. And because the prints were not considered valuable at the time, their owners did not take much care of them and in most cases would end up throwing them away! Earthquakes and fires were also frequent in Japanese cities and many prints were destroyed. Experts have estimated that this might represent around 8,000 prints. But given the commercial success of the design, printmakers would have produced prints until the woodblocks literally wore out. No records of the number of prints of the Great Wave produced during the Edo Period exist, and how many of these have survived to this day has not been established. Close up on the area under the boat on the left hand side of two prints of the Great Wave: the wave outline is well-defined in the print on the left but has almost disappeared in the print on the right.
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