Shower Below the Summit (Sanka hakuu), from the series "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei)"
Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is considered one of the greatest artists in Japanese history, and one of the important masters of the Japanese woodblock print. Hokusai's most famous work is the series Fugaku sanju-rokkei (Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji), created between 1830 and 1832, when the artist was over seventy years of age. This brilliant series actually consists of forty-six views of the well-known mountain: the extra ten scenes were added by Hokusai to the initial thirty-six views. The ingenuity of artistic expression and the astonishing variety of vantage points from which Mount F...
Details
- Palette
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Select a color to find related artworks.
- Medium
- Color woodblock print; oban
- Dimensions
- 25.7 × 37.6 cm (10 1/8 × 14 9/16 in.)
- Origin
- Japan
- Department
- Arts of Asia
- Holding institution
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Image provider
- art-institute-chicago
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Clarence Buckingham Collection
Art Genome Taxonomy
9 tags
Subject Matter
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Landscapes Both · 99%
The catalog identifies the subject as Mount Fuji, and the image visibly centers the volcanic mountain within a natural landscape.
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The Elements Both · 99%
The catalog describes a thunderstorm and jagged lightning near the mountain’s base; pale angular branching lines are clearly visible in the lower-right portion of the image.
Styles and Movements
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Ukiyo-e Metadata · 98%
The print belongs to Hokusai’s Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji series and is identified as a color woodblock print, supporting its classification within ukiyo-e.
Visual Qualities
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Dark Colors Visual · 97%
Deep blue and near-black areas dominate the sky’s upper edge and the expansive lower foreground, giving the print a dark overall tonal structure.
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Color Gradient Visual · 94%
The sky visibly shifts from deep blue at the top through lighter blue toward the horizon and mountain.
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Angular Both · 97%
Mount Fuji’s sharply sloping contours and the branching lightning produce a strongly angular visual structure.
Medium and Techniques
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Woodcut and Linocut Metadata · 99%
The supplied medium is explicitly identified as a color woodblock print.
Time Periods
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19th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The catalog dates the work to circa 1830/33, within the nineteenth century.
Geographic Regions
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Japanese Art Both · 99%
The work is cataloged as Japanese and was made by the Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai; its visual language is that of a Japanese woodblock landscape print.
Source & rights
Katsushika Hokusai. Shower Below the Summit (Sanka hakuu), from the series "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjurokkei)". The Art Institute of Chicago.