Page 24 - Sotheby's London Fine Japanese Art Nov. 2019

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEM AN

17

THE PROPERTY OF A GENTLEMAN
KATSUSHIKA HOKUSAI (1760–1849)
UNDER THE WAVE OFF KANAGAWA
(KANAGAWA-OKI NAMI-URA), ALSO KNOWN AS
THE GREAT WAVE
EDO PERIOD, 19 TH CENTURY
woodblock print: ink and colour on paper, from the series
Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjûrokkei),
signed Hoksai aratame Iitsu hitsu, published by Nishimura
Yohachi (Eijudo), circa 1830–31
Horizontal ôban:
24.5 x 37 cm., 9⅝ x 14½ in.
Recently it was convincingly suggested by Martin Bailey
that van Gogh could have drawn visual inspiration from
Hokusai’s print of the crushing Great Wave for the swirling
of the sky in Starry Night (Fig. 1), one of his most iconic
landscapes, painted during his time at the mental asylum
in Saint-Rémy. In the summer of 1888 van Gogh had
written passionately to his brother that “Hokusai makes
you cry out the same thing — but in his case with his lines,
his drawing, […] these waves are claws, the boat is caught
in them, you can feel it. Ah well, if we made the colour very
correct or the drawing very correct, we wouldn’t create
those emotions (letter 676 to Theo van Gogh).”
The same print is in numerous museum collections
including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, accession
no. 06.1283, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, accession
no. JP2569, and the British Museum, accession no.
1937,0710,0.147.
‡ £ 300,000-400,000
€ 337,000-449,000 US$ 373,000-497,000

Fig. 1 Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
The Starry Night, 1889
Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)
Oil on canvas, 29x36 ¼ (73,7x92,1 cm).
Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence

22 Buyers are liable to pay both the hammer price (as estimated above) and the buyer’s premium together with any applicable taxes and Artist’s Resale Right (which will depend on the individual circumstances).
Refer to the Buying at Auction and VAT sections at the back of this catalogue for further information.