Katsushika Hokusai

Edo-period master of woodblock printing, best known for the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji and its breakout image, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. Hokusai changed his artistic name more than thirty times across his life, each name marking a new phase of practice; he liked to say his real work would only begin after his hundredth birthday. He produced thousands of prints, illustrated books and paintings, and was already in his seventies when the Fuji series appeared. Cheap, portable and printed in editions of thousands, his images traveled with trade goods to Europe in the mid-19th century and triggered the Japonisme craze that reshaped the work of Manet, Degas, van Gogh and Whistler.