What the critics are saying about Hokusai: The Great Picture Book of Everything

Master printmaker‘s Japanese ink drawings put on display by British Museum for the first time

Hokusai drawing
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In 2019, “a modest wooden box” containing 103 Japanese ink drawings was consigned for sale at an auction house in Paris, said Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times. Unremarkable as it seemed, it was in fact “a treasure chest”: its contents were revealed to be the work of the master printmaker and painter Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), whose print Under the Wave off Kanagawa ranks as “one of the world’s most recognisable artworks”.

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