Descending dragon1760-1849
Katsushika Hokusai painted this in 1760-1849. It is now at the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC. More about this work
About this work
Katsushika Hokusai painted this in 1760-1849. It is now at the National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC.
How it was made
- Ink and colour on silk
- Silk was sized with glue and alum so it would hold a crisp brushline, and mineral colours were built up in thin layers. The sheen of the weave still shows through.
Katsushika Hokusai
Japanese, 1760–1849
Hokusai trained in the studio of the actor-portraitist Katsukawa Shunshō and went on to work under more than thirty names across a career of some seventy years. Alongside book illustration, paintings and the sketch volumes known as Hokusai Manga, he made landscape a leading subject of ukiyo-e with Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, issued around 1830–33, in which the mountain appears from city, coast and countryside, often in the newly imported Prussian blue.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The National Museum of Asian Art has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- F1904.189
- Credit
- Courtesy of the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution
- Type
- Painting
- Department
- National Museum of Asian Art
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
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