Where The Great Wave is all motion and drama, this print by the same artist is almost completely still. It's Mount Fuji, caught for a moment turning red in the early morning light.
What you're looking at
This print's full title is South Wind, Clear Sky, though it's widely known simply as Red Fuji. It comes from the same series as The Great Wave, Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, made around 1830-32, and its dating and place in that series are documented by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
A mountain reduced to three bands of color
Hokusai builds the whole print out of just three horizontal registers: the red-brown flank of the mountain, its snow-veined peak above, and a sky streaked with mackerel clouds. There's no boat, no wave, no human figure anywhere in the composition, just the mountain itself, caught at a specific moment when dawn light turns its slopes red.
Compared to the crowded drama of The Great Wave, Red Fuji is a study in restraint, proof that the same series, and the same printmaker, could work in a completely different register when the subject called for it.
One detail to look for
Look at the texture across the mountain's red flank. Hokusai's printmakers used subtle woodgrain and shading techniques to suggest the mountain's ridges and gullies without a single outline, all through variation in tone alone.
See it at its real size
Our canvas print is marked against the size of the original ōban sheet, about 10 x 15 inches. Shop the canvas print.