Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji – ‘full of beauty, humour and technical interest’

Mount Fuji has been “an object of devotion” for centuries, said Christopher Harding in The Telegraph. Located just beyond the limits of present-day Tokyo, the conical-shaped active volcano was long believed to be a place where “kami” (local deities) resided.

The best-known depictions of the peak come from the pen of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). In “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” (1831), the mountain sits “impassive in the distance” as tiny figures in boats scramble to face the titular wave: as many as 15,000 impressions were made of it, making it “the viral content of its day”.

But this was just one of 36 views of Fuji that Hokusai produced – a series that was later expanded to 46 “in response to heavy public demand”. Some depict pilgrims climbing the mountain; others feature it as a background, seen through a tea house window or behind a “bustling” timber yard. This exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery marks the first time the full set has ever been shown in Britain. It shows how the artist celebrated the “ubiquity of this guardian mountain in everyday life”.

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“You might think there are only so many times you can look at the same mountain, but Hokusai pulls rabbit after rabbit out of his conjurer’s hat,” said Laura Freeman in The Times. Sometimes, Fuji itself is the star of the picture, as in “Clear Day with a Southern Breeze” (c.1830, pictured above), where there’s “nothing but mountain” and sky. Sometimes, we see it glimpsed in the distance from “a cherry-blossom-viewing party”, or reflected in still waters, or as a backdrop to a blustery day, as “the wind whips skirts, steals hats and sends papers flying”.

Hokusai “revels in his own cleverness”, and his framing and tricks of perspective are “ingenious”. He depicts Fuji through a waterwheel, against soaring kites, beneath a ship’s rigging. Whatever he does, every scene is “rich in incident and amusement”. This is an exhibition that is “full of beauty, humour and technical interest”.

The show demonstrates just how profoundly Hokusai’s approach influenced artists in the West, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. His touch is immediately apparent in the work of van Gogh, Monet and Whistler but I hadn’t until now noticed Cézanne’s “debt” to the Japanese master: certainly, the French painter’s repeated efforts to paint Mont Sainte-Victoire in Provence owe something to Hokusai’s views of Fuji.

Hokusai, essentially, taught these painters “to see landscape as metaphysical”. A case in point is “The Great Wave” itself: it “is out of control, murderous, yet it is also a passing moment”. Hokusai, a devout Buddhist, offers the consolation that all is but ephemeral; that we must suffer “the nightmare of mutable appearances” in order to find “inner peace”. Fuji, meanwhile, stands permanent – “timeless” as the picture itself.
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Until 17 January.