Timeline Katsushika Hokusai: Old Man Mad About Painting

Katsushika Hokusai: Old Man Mad About Painting 23

• 1760 Katsushika Hokusai is born in Edo Born in the Katsushika district of Edo, present-day Tokyo Hokusai was born in Edo, the shogun's capital. He later took his family name, Katsushika, from the district where he was born.
• 1778 Katsushika Hokusai enters the studio of Katsukawa Shunshō Apprenticed to the leading ukiyo-e master of kabuki actor prints As a teenager Hokusai joined the studio of Katsukawa Shunshō, a famous designer of kabuki actor portraits. There he trained in the ukiyo-e style.
• 1779 Katsushika Hokusai publishes his first prints as Shunrō Debut with kabuki actor prints under his first art name Under the name Katsukawa Shunrō, Hokusai published his first known prints, which showed kabuki actors. He kept working in the Katsukawa school for about fifteen years.
• 1795 Katsushika Hokusai takes the art name Sōri A new identity after leaving the Katsukawa school After he left the Katsukawa school, Hokusai worked as Tawaraya Sōri. During this period he made surimono, which were privately commissioned luxury prints, and he took in influences from other painting traditions.
• 1798 Katsushika Hokusai adopts the name Hokusai Begins working as an independent artist Hokusai gave the name Sōri to a pupil and began calling himself Hokusai. He worked independently from then on, outside any school.
• 1804 Katsushika Hokusai paints a giant Daruma at Gokoku-ji A huge public painting created in front of a crowd in Edo At a festival at the Gokoku-ji temple in Edo, Hokusai painted a portrait of the Buddhist monk Daruma that covered about 200 square metres. Performances like this made him widely known.
• 1807 – 1811 Katsushika Hokusai illustrates Bakin's Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki A celebrated partnership with novelist Kyokutei Bakin Hokusai made the illustrations for Takizawa (Kyokutei) Bakin's historical novel Chinsetsu Yumiharizuki. This was one of several popular books the two produced together.
• 1814 Katsushika Hokusai creates The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife An erotic shunga image from the book Kinoe no Komatsu The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife was published in the three-volume shunga book Kinoe no Komatsu. It became one of Hokusai's most widely discussed images.
• 1814 Katsushika Hokusai publishes the first volume of Hokusai Manga Sketchbooks of people, animals and nature, first issued in Nagoya The first volume of Hokusai Manga was published in Nagoya as a book of model drawings for students. The series eventually grew to fifteen volumes and became widely known in Europe.
• 1817 Katsushika Hokusai paints a giant Daruma in Nagoya A second large public painting, this one in Nagoya On a visit to Nagoya, Hokusai painted another huge portrait of Daruma in front of spectators at a Hongan-ji branch temple. The event earned him the nickname Daruma Sensei.
• 1820 Katsushika Hokusai takes the name Iitsu Another change of art name at the age of sixty Hokusai began signing his work Iitsu, which means "one year old again". The name suited his sixtieth year, which in the Japanese calendar marks the completion of a full sixty-year cycle.
• 1828 Katsushika Hokusai's second wife dies Personal loss at the end of the 1820s Hokusai's second wife died in 1828. His daughter Ōi, who was also a talented painter, lived with him and worked alongside him for the rest of his life.
• 1830 – 1832 Katsushika Hokusai produces Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji The landscape series that made Hokusai famous, issued by Nishimuraya Yohachi This series of landscape prints showed Mount Fuji from many places and in all seasons. It used imported Prussian blue pigment and helped establish landscape as a major ukiyo-e genre.
• 1831 Katsushika Hokusai publishes The Great Wave off Kanagawa The best-known Japanese work of art in the world The Great Wave off Kanagawa was part of the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji series. It shows a huge wave towering over boats, with Fuji small in the distance, and has become an icon around the world.
• 1833 Katsushika Hokusai publishes A Tour of the Waterfalls of the Provinces A series of eight prints of famous Japanese waterfalls Building on the success of his Fuji prints, Hokusai designed a series of eight prints of waterfalls across Japan. The series is known for its bold, stylised water.
• 1834 Katsushika Hokusai publishes One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji An illustrated book signed Gakyō Rōjin Manji, "Old Man Mad About Painting" Fugaku Hyakkei is a three-volume illustrated book about Mount Fuji. In its postscript Hokusai wrote that nothing he had made before the age of seventy was worth noticing, and he hoped to master his art by the age of one hundred.
• 1834 Katsushika Hokusai publishes Remarkable Views of Bridges in Various Provinces A series of eleven prints of real and legendary bridges In Shokoku Meikyō Kiran, Hokusai showed bridges from all over Japan, some real and some imagined. It was another of the landscape series from his most productive years.
• 1835 – 1836 Katsushika Hokusai designs One Hundred Poems Explained by the Nurse Prints based on the classical poetry anthology Hyakunin Isshu Hokusai began a print series that illustrated the classical poetry anthology Hyakunin Isshu. Only part of the planned hundred designs was published.
• 1839 Katsushika Hokusai's studio is destroyed by fire A blaze in Edo destroys many of his drawings A fire swept through Hokusai's studio and destroyed many of his works and sketches. In his old age he struggled with money and often moved house.
• 1842 – 1843 Katsushika Hokusai draws his Daily Exorcisms lion series A shishi lion drawn almost every day as a charm against misfortune For most of a year, Hokusai drew a shishi (lion) or similar figure each morning as a talisman to ward off evil. These drawings are known as Nisshin Joma, or Daily Exorcisms.
• 1844 – 1845 Katsushika Hokusai paints festival float ceilings in Obuse Works for his patron Takai Kōzan in Shinano Province In his eighties Hokusai travelled to Obuse at the invitation of his patron Takai Kōzan. There he painted dragon, phoenix and wave panels for the ceilings of the town's festival floats.
• 1848 Katsushika Hokusai paints the phoenix ceiling at Ganshō-in A huge phoenix painted on the ceiling of a temple hall in Obuse Hokusai designed a large ceiling painting of a phoenix for the main hall of Ganshō-in temple in Obuse. It is often called the phoenix that glares in eight directions and is one of his last major works.
• 1849 Katsushika Hokusai dies in Edo Dies aged 88 and is buried at Seikyō-ji in Asakusa Hokusai died in Edo at the age of 88. On his deathbed he is said to have wished for five more years so that he could become a true painter.