The artist of The Great Wave went by at least thirty names in his lifetime, more than any other major Japanese artist of his day. 'Hokusai' is just the best known.

1831

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The event

• Hokusai's Great Wave off Kanagawac. 1831 · Kanagawa (Yokohama), Japan. Around 1831 the seventy-year-old Katsushika Hokusai published the print series 'Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji'. It opened with a claw-crested wave towering over fishermen's boats, with a tiny Mount Fuji in the distance. Hokusai used a newly imported pigment, Prussian blue. The print ran to thousands of impressions and later inspired Van Gogh and Debussy.

19th century

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