Artist of the Floating World: Katsushiiko Hokusai
Beyond the Great Wave – The Art of Katsushiko Hokusai (1760 – 1848) at the British Museum Katsushiko Hokusai was born in Edo (Tokyo) in 1760. Europe was simultaneously engulfed in the Seven Years War. Then Edo had one million inhabitants like London. Hokusai had many names but the name Hokusai was adopted when the artist was 39 and is the most common of all the pseudonyms he used. Another one is Gakyo Rojin Manji or The Old Man Crazy to Paint. His childhood name was Tokitaro (later Tetsuzo), he was adopted by the mirror-maker Nakajima Ise. In his teens, he trained as a woodblock cutter and by the time he was 20 he became part of the floating world school ( ukiyo-e ) by joining the studio of Katsukawa Shunsho. Shunsho was a leading floating world artist and Hokusai stayed with him until his death in 1792. Throughout his forties and fifties Hokusai completed many illustrations for popular fiction and special commissions for figurative paintings. These illustrations evoke n