Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji

Mount Fuji is a popular subject for Japanese art due to its cultural and religious significance. This belief can be traced to The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, where a goddess deposits the elixir of life on the peak. As the historian Henry Smith explains, "Thus from an early time, Mt. Fuji was seen as the source of the secret of immortality, a tradition that was at the heart of Hokusai's own obsession with the mountain." Each image was made through a process whereby Hokusai's drawing on paper was glued to a woodblock to guide the carving. The original design is therefore lost in the process. The block was then covered with ink and applied to paper to create the image (see Woodblock printing in Japan for further details). The complexity of Hokusai's images includes the wide range of colors he used, which required the use of a separate block for each color appearing in the image. The earliest prints in the series were made with largely blue tones (aizuri-e), including the key blocks which provide an image's outlines. The most famous single image from the series is widely known in English as The Great Wave off Kanagawa. It is Hokusai's most celebrated work and is often considered the most recognizable work of Japanese art in the world. Another iconic work from Thirty-six Views is Fine Wind, Clear Morning, also known as Red Fuji, which has been described as "one of the simplest and at the same time one of the most outstanding of all Japanese prints". Influence While Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji is the most famous ukiyo-e series to focus on Mount Fuji, there are several other works with the same subject, including Hiroshige's later series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and Hokusai's subsequent book One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji (published 1834–1835). In his 1896 book on Hokusai, French art critic Edmond de Goncourt wrote that despite its "rather crude colors", it was, "the album which inspires the landscapes of the impressionists of the present moment." The French artist Henri Rivière (1864–1951) published the set of color lithographs "Thirty-six views of the Tour Eiffel" in 1902, inspired by the seminal print set of Hokusai, one of the many influences of Japanese art on late 19th century and early 20th century French art (Japonism, known as "Japonisme" in French) ==Prints==

Original thirty-six Additional 10 ==Exhibitions==

A collection of Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji prints contained in the wellness spa of the Costa Concordia was lost when the ship sank on January 13, 2012. In the spring of 2012, all forty-six prints (the original thirty-six plus the ten additions) were featured in the exhibition Hokusai: 36 Views of Mount Fuji at the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C.. The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji prints were displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston as part of a Hokusai exhibit from 5 April to 9 August, 2015. The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji prints were displayed at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia as part of a Hokusai exhibit from 21 July through 22 October 2017. The exhibit featured two copies of The Great Wave off Kanagawa, one from the NGV and one from Japan Ukiyo-e Museum. There are fewer than 10 complete sets of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, with prominent pieces held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MFA Boston, the British Museum, and the Bibliothèque nationale de France. == Markets ==

Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji is often sold in prominent auction houses focused on Japanese art, such as that of Christie's, Sotheby's, Bonhams, etc. ==See also==