A complete set comprising 46 ukiyoe woodblocks by Katsushika Kokusai depicting Mt. Christie’s New York is selling Mt. Fuji in Japan.
The auction house expects that the prints from the “Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji” series, made between 1830-1833, will fetch a price total “in the millions” of U.S. dollar.
Takaaki Murakami is the head of Christie’s Japanese and Korean Art Department in New York.
(Photo courtesy of Christie’s)(Kyodo) An undated photograph shows a ukiyo e print of Katsushika’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”, which was sold by the New York-based Christie’s. (Photo courtesy Christie’s)
Katsushika (or Katsushika) Hokusai was a Japanese master woodblock printer in Edo. Today, Tokyo. The Mt. Fuji series is one of his most celebrated works. It depicts Japan’s highest peak, southwest of Tokyo from different perspectives and seasons.
Some of the prints are older impressions while others are more recent impressions. The series was not published as a whole but in multiple installments,” Murakami said.
Christie’s sold a single print, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa”, from the series for $2.76M in March. Murakami stated that the previous auction was not “comparable to” the upcoming full-set auction.
According to auction house, seller is an American citizen.
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