Artist: Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾北斎 (1760–1849) Work: 山中の不二 Sanchū no Fuji — "Fuji in the Mountains" Series: 富嶽百景 Fugaku hyakkei — "One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji," Volume 1 (shohen 初編) Publisher: Nishimuraya Yohachi (Eijudō), Edo Date: Blocks for Volume 1 cut Tenpō 5 (1834); published 1834–35 Technique: Woodblock print (mokuhanga), black line with grey tone blocks Format: Double-page composition (mihiraki) from a disbound album, the two half-leaves joined at the gutter. Approx. 21 × 26 cm overall ---------------------------------------------------------------- Condition Excellent, strong impression. Minor soiling and minor repaired binding holes are present. The whole composition is very well perserved. Please refer to the images for full detail. ------------------------------------------------------- About the print Fugaku hyakkei is Hokusai's late masterpiece in book form — 102 views across three volumes, begun at seventy-five, immediately after the colour series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. Stripped of colour and reduced to black line and grey wash, the hundred views are where Hokusai does his most audacious compositional thinking: Fuji is almost never the subject, only the thing glimpsed past whatever happens to be in the way. Here the obstruction is the mountain itself. Hokusai gives nearly the whole sheet to a steep hillside built from long, curling parallel strokes that run diagonally from upper left to lower right — a surface of pure restless line, more weather than geology. Onto it he threads a scatter of small figures: two hunters at the left with long-barrelled matchlocks, one standing bearded and hooded, one crouched in a straw cape; a woman in a patterned kimono climbing the path; porters with basketry loads on their backs; a figure resting near the lower right. Fuji sits far off in the gap between the trees at the upper right, small, pale and unshaded — the one still thing in the design.