# Dyers at Work

**Katsushika Hokusai** (Japanese, 1760–1849)  
c. 1800  
color woodblock print  
Sheet: 18.8 x 53 cm (7 3/8 x 20 7/8 in.)

Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1920.525. [The museum's record](https://clevelandart.org/art/1920.525).

## About this work

Katsushika Hokusai designed this in about 1800, aged about 35. It is now at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

### How it was made

- **Colour woodblock print.** In Japan these were a team effort. The artist drew the design, a carver cut it into cherry-wood blocks, one block for each colour, and a printer brushed on the pigment and rubbed each sheet by hand. Full-colour prints of this kind were called nishiki-e, “brocade pictures”, from the 1760s on.

### [Katsushika Hokusai](https://www.ochreeditions.com/artists/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._

## Facts

- Type: Print
- Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
- The artist was about 35
- Real size: about 7½ × 21 in (19 × 53 cm). The 16 × 20 in print is close to life size.
- Century: 18th century
- Movement: [Ukiyo-e](https://www.ochreeditions.com/movements/ukiyo-e)
- Colour: grey
- Rights: public domain (CC0 1.0); free to use for any purpose.

## Get it

- Free download, full resolution: https://img.ochreeditions.com/m/503.jpg?dl=1
- Image: https://img.ochreeditions.com/a/503/1920.jpg
- Giclée reproduction on Hahnemühle Photo Rag: 8 × 10 in $28; 11 × 14 in $38; 12 × 16 in $42; 16 × 20 in $56; 18 × 24 in $68
- Framed reproduction: 8 × 10 in $78; 11 × 14 in $98; 12 × 16 in $108; 16 × 20 in $138; 18 × 24 in $164
- Canvas reproduction: 8 × 10 in $58; 11 × 14 in $72; 12 × 16 in $79; 16 × 20 in $98
- Print-ready file: 8 × 10 in $2; 11 × 14 in $2; 12 × 16 in $3; 16 × 20 in $3; 18 × 24 in $3

Sizes stop where the museum's file would print below 150 pixels per inch. Everything sold is a reproduction, made to order. [Order a print](https://www.ochreeditions.com/art/dyers-at-work-cma-101863).