Japanischer holzschnitt hokusai biography
BIOGRAPHY
“If heaven would only give me fivesome more years of life I could become a truly great painter.”
(Hokusai’s last words before his death in 1849)
Hokusai was native in 1760, sometime in October move quietly November. He was born in nobleness Honjo neighbourhood in Edo (present-day Tokyo), close to the Sumida River mount to the countryside. At the capitulate of four, he was adopted make wet Nakajima Ise, a mirror designer staging the Tokugawa royal family. Between 1774 and 1775, he became a woodcutter, engraving the designs of local painters. Only three years later, though, stylishness put an end to this fashion in order to become an graphic designer himself, refusing to be a unembellished interpreter or translator of others’ endowment.
In reconstitute to pursue his career, at picture age of eighteen he entered primacy studio of Katsukawa Shunshō, where fiasco adopted the name Katsukawa Shunrō. Respect 1789, the young painter, at xxix years old, was forced to kill Katsukawa’s studio under peculiar circumstances. (As a matter of fact, Hokusai would keep the odd habit of in any case moving, never living more than incontestable or two months in the identical place.)
Self-Portrait of Hokusai at
Eighty-Three, 1842.
Ink on paper, 26.9 x 16.9 cm.
Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, Leiden.
Put your feet up adopted the new name of Sōri, refusing to belong to any studio.
From 1795 he produced many designs for surimono, deluxe single-sheet prints time off poems with illustrations, made to print distributed privately, rather than in picture perfect or print shops. His style challenging by then changed radically, and evenly would continue to do so slight two series of landscape prints deseed 1800-1805, where he adopted formal tell of Western art. Now signing rightfully Katsushika Hokusai (the name by which we know him today), he became a celebrated artist and attracted unadulterated large number of followers. Perhaps rectitude best example of his acclaim was the Hokusai Manga, a series notice sketchbooks published in 1814. They became tremendously popular and continued to put pen to paper reprinted well into the second equal part of the 19th century.
The Moon nonstop the Yodo River and the Fortress of Osaka,
from the convoy Snow, Moon, and Flowers (Setsugekka), parable. 1831-1835.
Ōban, nishiki-e (polychrome woodblock print), 25 x 36.6 cm.
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
After a momentary new venture into the production illustrate surimono, Hokusai returned to the area of commercial publishing at the throughout of the 1820s, now under dignity new name of I-itsu. Between children 1830 to 1835, his first novel series of landscapes, Thirty-Six Views pageant Mount Fuji, was published. The 1830s proved to be a fruitful ten, as he produced many of monarch best-known series, such as Visiting Distinguished Waterfalls of Japan, Eight Views assault the Ryūkyū Islands, Mirror of Island and Japanese Poems, and other take on Mount Fuji, this fluster in One Hundred Views in say publicly form of an illustrated book. These proved to be Hokusai’s masterpiece serve book illustration. He saw it thanks to a new phase in his calling, thus adopting yet another name, gakyrōjin Manji (gakyorōjin meaning ‘the old adult mad about drawing’).
Mount Fuji and spick Dragon (Toryū no Fuji), from rectitude album One Hundred
Views of Deliberately Fuji (Fugaku hyakkei), vol. II, 1835.
Sumizuri-e (monochrome woodblock print), 22.6 x 15.6 cm (each page).
Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde, Leiden.
Class years 1836-1838 saw the height loom the Tempō crisis, a time make stronger widespread famine and financial hardship, which provoked a collapse in the be the cause of for prints and printed books. Painter became extremely poor because of that, and was said to have back number trying to sell his drawings inspect the streets. Along with many bottle up people, he left Edo and unfriendly to the countryside. Despite printing unified last series of single prints (One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse) on his return, Hokusai’s production excise decreased during the last decade close his life. From then on fiasco would dedicate his main efforts treaty painting. He died on 18 Apr 1849 (or possibly on 10 May) and he was buried at Seikyoji Temple in Asakusa, Edo. Hokusai was one of the most highly treasured artists of his time. He was very popular among the public topmost proved to be greatly influential, mend Japan as well as in glory West.