Under the Wave off Kanagawa (The Great Wave), ca. 1830–32
Katsushika Hokusai
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper · 10 1/8 x 14 15/16 in. (25.7 x 37.9 cm)
The definitive great wave, its claw of foam poised over boats with Fuji small beyond.
Hokusai's towering wave, its foam clawing at boats while a tiny Mount Fuji sits calm on the horizon, is the most recognised image in Japanese art. Printed around 1831 from carved woodblocks, its bold blue and graphic line still feel astonishingly modern on a screen or wall.
What you're looking at
Three boats, not one. They are oshiokuri-bune, fast cargo skiffs, and the rowers are folded flat along the hulls as the water comes over them. Mount Fuji sits small and snow-capped in the trough, drawn with the same line weight as the claws of foam above it, so the eye keeps mistaking one for the other. The blue is Prussian blue, a European pigment newly available in Japan that Hokusai took up in the 1830s. At 4K the woodgrain prints through, and so does the bokashi — the graded sky, wiped onto the block by hand, slightly different in every impression.
On a Frame TV
Landscape, about 3:2, so the 16:9 crop trims top and bottom and leaves the composition intact. Flat colour and hard outline make it read from across a room better than almost anything else in the collection, and the high contrast survives a bright space where softer paintings go grey.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York · Visit it in New York →
- 4K master file (3840px+)
- Samsung Frame TV–ready crop
- Phone wallpaper crop
- Printable art card
Public domain · one .zip, no sign-up
Why The Great Wave is not a tsunami →
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Other works in the collection, starting with Katsushika Hokusai.
