South Wind, Clear Sky (Gaifū kaisei), also known as Red Fuji, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (Fugaku sanjūrokkei)

This is the print known as Red Fuji, the second design in Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series. He made it around 1830, when he was in his early seventies and working with a intensity that surprised even his contemporaries. Mount Fuji dominates the composition, filling the frame from bottom to top. The mountain is rendered in rust red and ochre, its slopes streaked with dark vertical lines that suggest exposed rock and sparse vegetation. The peak is capped with white snow. The sky is a soft, mottled green-grey, and small white clouds drift across the upper portion. The composition is simple and frontal: the mountain alone, with no human figures, no buildings, no boats. Hokusai had been producing ukiyo-e prints for over forty years by the time he began the Fuji series. He lived in Edo and had recently changed his professional name to Iitsu, a practice he repeated throughout his career. The Fuji series was his first major landscape project and it sold well, establishing him as a printmaker of scenic views rather than just figure studies. Ukiyo-e prints of the early nineteenth century were shifting from portraits of actors and courtesans toward landscapes and nature studies. Hokusai and Hiroshige were the two figures who drove this shift. The Prussian blue used in the Fuji series was a new import from Europe and gave these prints a tonal range that earlier Japanese prints could not achieve. Woodblock print, ink and color on paper, 25.4 by 37.8 centimeters. The red of the mountain comes from iron-oxide pigment layered over the base color. The print is an oban format, the standard size for commercial ukiyo-e. The warm reds and earth tones of this print make it a good fit for rooms with wood furniture, warm white walls, or terracotta accents. It works well in a dining room or study, where its quiet composition can be appreciated up close. The 16x20 framed version in a natural wood frame suits smaller spaces. The Met's impression came through the Henry L. Phillips bequest in 1939. This is a public domain artwork (CC0), from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. We print it on archival matte paper at sizes from 8x10 to 24x36 inches, framed or unframed. The image is printed at full resolution with no cropping.