"Exquisitely detailed ink and watercolor illustrations embellish every page . . . An excellent curriculum supplement, this will enchant and inspire aspiring artists and transport even casual browsers to 19th-century Japan."
Tojiro, a young seller of rice cakes in the Japanese capital of Edo, later known as Tokyo, is amazed to discover that the grumpy and shabby old man who buys his cakes is a famous artist renowned for his sketches, prints, and paintings of flowers, animals, and landscapes.
A major publication on Hokusai's remarkable late work, incorporating fresh scholarship on the sublime paintings and prints the artist created in the last thirty years of his life
Katsushika Hokusai was a brilliant artist, ukiyo-e painter and print maker, best known for his wood block print series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. These prints are famous both in Japan and overseas, and have left a lasting image in the worldwide art world. Hokusai's artistic influence has stretched to have affected the Art Nouveau style in Europe, including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Hermann Obrist, all of whom have themes similar to Hokusai's. Hokusai lived a reclusive life with his daughters, including Oi, a fine painter in her own right. In 1811 Hokusai met Maki Bokusen in Nagoya, who arranged for publication the first ten volumes of the Hokusai Manga ('Hokusai Sketches') between 1812 and 1819. Hokusai had a long career, but he produced most of his important work after age 60. The largest of Hokusai's works is the 15-volume collection Hokusai Manga, a book crammed with nearly 4,000 sketches. These sketches are often incorrectly considered the precedent to modern manga, as Hokusai's Manga is a collection of sketches (of animals, people, objects, etc.), different from the story-based comic-book style of modern manga.
Hokusai began drawing at the age of six, and by 18 he had been accepted into the Katsukawa Shunsho School. He had a long career, but he produced most of his important work after age 60. The largest of Hokusai's works is the 15-volume collection Hokusai Manga, a book crammed with nearly 4,000 sketches. The aged artist lost everything in a fire at his lodgings in 1839 and devoted the last ten years of his life to painting increasingly transcendent subjects, such as tigers and mythic creatures. It is said that once he exclaimed: “From the age of 6 I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was 50 I had published a universe of designs. But all I have done before the age of 70 is not worth bothering with. At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad about Drawing.”