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, also known as ''Rainstorm Beneath the Summit'', or sometimes ''Black Fuji'' (黒富士 ''Kurofuji'') is a
Soon after publication the blocks were slightly damaged with the loss of one of the brown dots below the summit and the end of the 'hitsu' ('brush of') character from Hokusai's signature. Impressions made before this have "continuous blue down the sky, wiped lighter across the middle, so making clear the entire shapes of the cumulonimbus clouds - rather than leaving a wide band of un-inked sky across the centre and thereby losing their tops."
In a later impression the publisher introduced some significant changes. The sky is now rendered in purplish greyish with a band of yellow at the top. The flash of the lightning bolt vividly silhouettes a group of pine trees at the foot of the mountain, cut from a new block, making them appear close to the viewer.
woodcut print
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that ...
by the Japanese ukiyo-e
Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...
master Hokusai
, known simply as Hokusai, was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist of the Edo period, active as a painter and printmaker. He is best known for the woodblock printing in Japan, woodblock print series ''Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji'', which includes the ...
(1760–1849). It is one of the most famous prints from his celebrated '' Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji'' series, published .
Description
The composition is very similar to that of '' Fine Wind, Clear Morning'' (or ''Red Fuji'') from the same series, but the atmosphere is markedly different. Here, instead of a hazy and serene view,Mount Fuji
, or Fugaku, located on the island of Honshū, is the highest mountain in Japan, with a summit elevation of . It is the second-highest volcano located on an island in Asia (after Mount Kerinci on the island of Sumatra), and seventh-highest p ...
is rendered ominously in strong heavy tones. The contours of the mountainside are more textured and defined. The snowy cap rises sharply over a darkly menacing base which has been split by a bolt of lighting rendered with powerful, almost abstract, zigzag lines. As with ''Fine Wind, Clear Morning'', a thin line of Prussian blue
Prussian blue (also known as Berlin blue, Brandenburg blue or, in painting, Parisian or Paris blue) is a dark blue pigment produced by oxidation of ferrous ferrocyanide salts. It has the chemical formula Fe CN)">Cyanide.html" ;"title="e(Cyanid ...
is used in the upper portion of the sky, but here the clouds have a smoke-like quality and appear to cling to the mountain. The three peaks at the summit suggest that this view is of the back of Fuji (i.e. seen from the West), another contrast with the ''Red Fuji'' print.
Impressions
Soon after publication the blocks were slightly damaged with the loss of one of the brown dots below the summit and the end of the 'hitsu' ('brush of') character from Hokusai's signature. Impressions made before this have "continuous blue down the sky, wiped lighter across the middle, so making clear the entire shapes of the cumulonimbus clouds - rather than leaving a wide band of un-inked sky across the centre and thereby losing their tops."
In a later impression the publisher introduced some significant changes. The sky is now rendered in purplish greyish with a band of yellow at the top. The flash of the lightning bolt vividly silhouettes a group of pine trees at the foot of the mountain, cut from a new block, making them appear close to the viewer.
References
{{Hokusai Works by Hokusai