The Paper's reporter Lu Linhan reported comprehensively
Recently, the British Museum in London announced the purchase of 103 paintings by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai. This batch of works, illustrated by Hokusai for an unpublished book, The Illustrated Book of All Things, was later collected by private French collectors for more than 70 years, depicting a wide range of works, from religious, mythological, historical, literary figures to animals, birds and flowers, as well as other natural phenomena and landscapes.
This batch of works marked a turning point in the art of the artist, who was already 70 years old at the time, and he created "Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji". Tim Clark, Research Fellow Emeritus at the British Museum, said: "These works greatly expand our understanding of the critical periods in Katsushika Hokusai's life and artistic creation, with 103 works using fantasies and brush techniques common in Hokusai's later works. ”
These small-scale illustrations were created in 1829 by Katsushika Hokusai for an unpublished book, the Great Picture Book of Everything, and were owned by collector and Art Nouveau jeweler Henri Vever (1854-1842). After the death of Henri Van Fer in 1943, the works subsequently "surfaced" in 1948 and appeared at the Paris auction. Since then, after more than 70 years of silence, in 2019 these works have once again appeared at auction.
Great Picture Book of Everything
The British Museum's newly purchased Picture Book of All Things, illustrations by Katsushika Hokusai
According to the British Museum, the ink illustrations were sold at Piasa auction house in Paris last June for a starting price of between €15,000 and €20,000, and were eventually purchased by the British Museum for €136,500 with funding from the Art Fund. The British Museum also currently owns Katsushika Hokusai's masterpiece, The Surf in Kanagawa (1831), which the museum purchased for £130,000 in 2008.
Now, this batch of acquired works has been added to the British Museum's collection of Katsushika Hokusai works. It is also the most comprehensive museum outside of Japan, with a total collection of more than 1,000 works by Katsushika Hokusai, including paintings, prints, drawings, and book illustrations. Among them, the most famous collection of prints, "Kanagawa Surf", became the core exhibit in the 2017 exhibition "Katsushika Hokusai: Beyond the Great Wave", attracting 150,000 visitors.
The British Museum's collection of "Kanagawa Surf"
Currently, all purchased illustrations are available on the British Museum's website. Viewers can appreciate the details of Katsushika Hokusai's pen through preview and zoom techniques. The depictions of these illustrations range from religious, mythological, historical, and literary figures to animals, birds, and flowers, as well as other natural phenomena and landscapes. They are mainly related disciplines to ancient China and India, as well as Southeast Asia and Central Asia.
Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) was a Japanese ukiyo-e painter of the Edo period. At the age of 14, he began to learn engraving and printing in a printing shop, and some people say that he was apprenticed in a rented bookstore, during which he was exposed to a variety of illustrated books, which made him interested in popular painting. His painting style had a great influence on the later European painting world, and many impressionist painting masters such as Degas, Manet, Van Gogh, Gauguin and so on copied his works.
Illustration of Katsushika Hokusai in the British Museum's newly purchased Picture Book of All Things
This batch of illustrations is a major discovery about Katsushika Hokusai's life and works. They are particularly important because they come from a critical stage in the artist's career, when he was in the midst of a series of challenges when people thought he created relatively few works. During the two years of creating this batch of illustrations, he suffered the death of his second wife and recovered from a stroke. A few months after completing the work, Katsushika Hokusai expressed in a letter a willingness to cut taxes, in part because of gambling debts of his idle grandson.
At present, the reasons why these paintings were never published are unclear, but they marked a turning point in the career of the artist, who was already 70 years old at the time, indicating that he entered a new era of creation, and soon after that, he created the famous "Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji" (around 1831-33).
Hartwig Fischer, director of the British Museum, said: "This is a true complement to the British Museum's collection and another milestone in our collection of Hokusai. Our collection of Katsushika Hokusai's works has lasted for more than 150 years. We are delighted to see that these newly discovered works are now open to the public collection for all to enjoy. ”
Tim Clark, Research Fellow Emeritus at the British Museum, said: "These works are an important discovery that greatly expands our understanding of the critical periods of Katsushika Hokusai's life and artistic creation. All 103 works use the fantasies and brush techniques commonly found in Hokusai's later works. It's so good that they can finally be loved by art lovers all over the world. ”
The official website of the British Museum
These new illustrations can now be viewed through the British Museum's knowledge system, the ResearchSpace. The museum's experts are working to study the 103 works in an attempt to make meaningful connections between them and other paintings. Researchers from different institutions can link these images to other works. For example, curators can link it to similar drawings from the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Bibliothèque National de Paris. At the same time, it can also be extended to a wider range of people, places, events, events and ideas. On the website, the museum's associates say, "In the process of studying these illustrations, it is fascinating to come up with groupings of related topics and show their relationship to more of Katsushika Hokusai's works." ”
The British Museum is currently planning to exhibit these works (to be determined).
(This article is a synthesis of the British Museum and The Art Newspaper)
Editor-in-Charge: Weihua Gu
Proofreader: Luan Meng