When I first saw Katsushika Hokusai’s Clear Day with a Southern Breeze (also known as Red Fuji, 1830-1833), I was struck by its lustrous red resonating against the receding blue of the sky. Clouds align gently in an almost humorous formation. Near the peak of the mountain, are creases of snow. At its foot we are drawn to a multitude of tiny trees amassed in chorus. Easy to overlook, they change the picture. The great mountain becomes itself in relation to everything that surrounds it.
Dulwich Picture Gallery is showing all of Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mount Fuji, including ten added after the series became popular. Hokusai made them in his seventies in the early 1830s as cheap prints for ordinary people in Edo (today’s Tokyo). It is the first, and perhaps only, time the complete series will be shown together in the UK.
