Biography hokusai katsushika death

Hokusai was instrumental in developing ukiyo-e from a style of portraiture largely focused on courtesans and actors into a much broader style of art that focused on landscapes, plants, and animals. His works had a significant influence on Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet during the wave of Japonisme that spread across Europe in the late 19th century.

Hokusai created the monumental Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji as a response to a domestic travel boom in Japan and as part of a personal interest in Mount Fuji. Hokusai was best known for his woodblock ukiyo-e prints, but he worked in a variety of mediums including painting and book illustration. Starting as a young child, he continued working and improving his style until his death, aged In a long and successful career, Hokusai produced over 30, paintings, sketches, woodblock prints, and images for picture books in total.

How old was hokusai when he died

Innovative in his compositions and exceptional in his drawing technique, Hokusai is considered one of the greatest masters in the history of art. Hokusai was known by at least thirty names during his lifetime. While the use of multiple names was a common practice of Japanese artists of the time, his number of pseudonyms exceeds that of any other major Japanese artist.

His name changes are so frequent, and so often related to changes in his artistic production and style, that they are used for breaking his life up into periods. At the age of 12, his father sent him to work in a bookshop and lending library , a popular institution in Japanese cities, where reading books made from woodcut blocks was a popular entertainment of the middle and upper classes.

It was under this name that he published his first prints, a series of pictures of kabuki actors published in He married again in , although this second wife also died after a short time.

10 facts about hokusai

Hokusai also changed the subjects of his works, moving away from the images of courtesans and actors that were the traditional subjects of ukiyo-e. Instead, his work became focused on landscapes and images of the daily life of Japanese people from a variety of social levels. This change of subject was a breakthrough in ukiyo-e and in Hokusai's career.