Page 130 - Christies Japanese and Korean Art Sept 22 2020 NYC

Selection From An Important Japanese Collection
(lot 102–127)

117
KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (1760-1849)
Kanagawa oki nami ura (Under the well of the Great Wave off
Kanagawa)
Woodblock print, from the series Fugaku sanjurokkei (Thirty-six
views of Mount Fuji), signed Hokusai aratame Iitsu hitsu, published by
Nishimuraya Yohachi (Eijudo), late 1831
Horizontal oban: 10¿ x 15 in. (25.7 x 38.1 cm.)
$150,000-250,000

Under the Well of the Wave off Kanagawa has been making waves
since it was introduced to Europe in the mid-nineteenth century––a
glorious history that needs no introduction here. Exhibitions
devoted to Hokusai attract record-breaking crowds on the strength
of this one image among the thousands he produced. See also,
“Katsushika Hokusai: The Great Wave,” series 3, episode 6 of
“Private Life of a Masterpiece,” broadcast by the BBC in March
2009 and a thorough introduction to this print by a team of
scholars; Hokusai is the sole non-European (Whistler counting as
British) artist in the company of da Vinci, Picasso, Goya etc.
Introduced as a playful element on a beauty print he designed in his
teens, waves pervade Hokusai’s repertoire, and antecedents for Wave
off Kanagawa appear in several of his prints from the early 1800s,
thirty years before this one came out around 1831. Hokusai was
then in his seventies and in need of financial and artistic sustenance;
his wife had died and he and his daughter–collaborator, Oi, were
forced out of their home by the impecunious habits of Hokusai’s
grandson. “No money, no clothes, barely enough to eat,” wrote
Hokusai. The Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, in which the publisher
Nishimuraya Yohachi (Eijudo) saw commercial potential, proved so
successful that several editions were printed, which accounts for the
variety of coloration one encounters in the blue water and sky and
the black gradation above the horizon of the “Great Wave.”
The season is early spring, when the crest of Mount Fuji is saturated
with snow. The time is dawn. The “waves that are claws” that Van
Gogh saw in this image is, as wave scientists have now explained, a
series of cresting waves that end in hooks, known as fractal waves.
The astonishing aspect of Hokusai’s treatment is how closely it
resembles the actual wave. Experts are divided as to whether he
saw one of these rogue waves or heard about one from fisherman.
An essay of interest to anyone engaged with this print is accessible
online: Julyan H. E. Cartwright and Nakamura Hisami, “What
Kind of a Wave is Hokusai’s Great Wave Off Kanagawa,” Notes and
Records of The Royal Society 63 (2009): 119–35. They, and others,
pinpoint the scene as outside the mouth of Tokyo Bay in seas
known for rough water. Mount Fuji is visible from this position as
Hokusai has it: far away, so it looks small. The boats are heading
away from Edo (Tokyo), speeding to meet fishermen with fresh
catches of bonito, a springtime delicacy that sold for high prices
in the capital. There are eight boatmen to skull the boats, rather
than the more usual four, suggesting that they intend a round trip.
Whether they manage, hunkered down over their oars, to slice
through the wave like surfers or be pummeled by it is, of course,
the captivating mystery of the drama.