# Grasshopper and Iris

**Katsushika Hokusai** (Japanese, 1760–1849)  
late 1820s  
Woodblock print; ink and color on paper  
Overall: 9 3/4 x 14 3/16in. (24.8 x 36 cm)

Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, JP747. [The museum's record](https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/37192).

## About this work

A grasshopper clings to a stem of iris beneath its blossoms, the sword-like leaves sweeping upward. Hokusai designed a set of smaller flower prints, each pairing a plant with an insect or bird, and they show the same sharp observation and graphic boldness as his landscapes. Fluid outlines and areas of delicately graded colour turn a scrap of garden into a complete composition.

_Written by Ochre Editions._

Katsushika Hokusai designed this in the late 1820s, aged about 64. It is now at The Met in New York.

### 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: Prints
- Culture: Japan
- The artist was about 64
- Real size: about 10 × 14 in (25 × 36 cm). The 11 × 14 in print is close to life size.
- Century: 19th century
- Movement: [Ukiyo-e](https://www.ochreeditions.com/movements/ukiyo-e)
- Subjects: Insects, Flowers
- Colour: olive
- Rights: public domain (CC0 1.0); free to use for any purpose.

## Get it

- Free download, full resolution: https://img.ochreeditions.com/m/879.jpg?dl=1
- Image: https://img.ochreeditions.com/a/879/1920.jpg
- Giclée reproduction on Hahnemühle Photo Rag: 8 × 10 in $28; 11 × 14 in $38
- Framed reproduction: 8 × 10 in $78; 11 × 14 in $98
- Canvas reproduction: 8 × 10 in $58
- Print-ready file: 8 × 10 in $2; 11 × 14 in $2

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/grasshopper-and-iris-met-37192).