“South Wind, Clear Sky”
This beautiful woodblock print is by the Japanese artist, Katsushika Hokusai, and dates to circa 1830 to 1832. It goes by several names, including “South Wind, Clear Sky”, “Fine Wind, Clear Morning”, and “Red Fuji”.
Katsushika Hokusai was a Japanese artist from the Edo period who lived in the early nineteenth century, during Japan’s isolationist period. Hokusai is mostly known for his series of woodblock prints titled ‘Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji’. This piece is one of those series and is a depiction of how Mount Fuji often turns red in the early morning from rays of sunlight.
As a woodblock print, there are several other variants of this piece with slightly different colorations. The earlier variants had more muted colors and were closer to Hokusai’s original vision. This style of Japanese landscapes is part of the Ukiyo-e genre (“pictures of the floating world”) that greatly influenced the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists of the late nineteenth century.
Prints of “South Wind, Clear Sky” can be found at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in Indianapolis, Indiana, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the British Museum in London, England.
For more on Katsushika Hokusai, please visit his short biography here.
You can find more artists to learn about here.
