Katsushika Hokusai
Painter (1760 – 1849) Tokyo, Japan

Hokusai was an energetic artist who would rise early and paint until dusk, and he worked in this way until the final days of his life. Among Hokusai’s approximately 30,000 works, the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji stand out. This famous series of 46 color prints marked a milestone in Japanese landscape printing, as the grandeur of the design and the skill of execution displayed by Hokusai had not been seen until then. This tireless painter, or "old man mad about painting," as he described himself, died at 89, surely without having satisfied his quest for truth in painting. "At the age of five I had a mania for sketching the forms of things; by the age of 50 I had produced a large number of drawings. Yet, none had any true merit until the age of 70. At 73 I finally learned something about the true nature of things, birds, animals, insects, fish, grasses, and trees. Therefore, at the age of 80 I will have made some progress, at 90 I will have penetrated even further into the essence of art, at 100 I will have finally reached an exceptional level, and at 110, every dot and every line of my drawings will have a life of its own."