Ahead of the opening of Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji from the Iuchi Collection at Dulwich Picture Gallery, The Wick is taking a closer look at Under the Wave off Kanagawa, better known simply as The Great Wave. One of the most recognisable images in art history, Hokusai’s woodblock print shows an enormous wave rising above three long boats off the coast of Kanagawa, its white spray breaking into claw-like fingers as Mount Fuji sits almost impossibly small in the distance. The scale is an illusion: Japan’s highest mountain has been reduced to a tiny peak beneath the wave, while the sea towers over everything in its path.

Created as part of Hokusai’s celebrated Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the print was commercially produced for a wide audience rather than created as a unique object. Thousands of impressions were produced from carved woodblocks and sold in Edo, making this now museum-worthy image something people could actually own. Its extraordinary blues were equally modern for the time, as Hokusai used indigo alongside Prussian blue – a synthetic pigment that had only recently become widely available to Japanese printmakers and brought a unique intensity to the sea. The series proved such a success that ten further designs were eventually added to the original thirty-six.

Nearly two centuries later, The Great Wave has travelled far beyond the world in which it was made. Its curling crest has been borrowed, reproduced and reimagined across art, fashion and popular culture, and now appears on the back of Japan’s ¥1,000 banknote. At Dulwich, the wave returns to the company of the series it belongs to, offering the opportunity to see the famous image within the wider series for which it was created.

Hokusai: Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji from the Iuchi Collection is on view at Dulwich Picture Gallery from 20 October 2026 to 17 January 2027.

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