Hokusai may be found in Kuniyoshi's Tatsugawa, the hundred celebrated poets (reproduced in Burty's Catalogue, p. 130). A portrait of him in his eightieth year, by his daughter Oyei, is reproduced by Goncourt in colours at the beginning of his book. We find reproductions of his works in Gonse, i. 94, 95 (landscapes of about 1790), i. 274, and ii. 338 (of the year 1802), and in Anderson's Japanese Wood-Engraving, ill. 24 (interior view in perspective from a work of 1826), as well as in numerous other places. Fenollosa (Outline, pl. xvii.) reproduces one of his paintings.
After a thorough training in youth, Hokusai had risen, about the year 1800, to the first rank of artists; by his subsequent activity, which always exhibited great ability and imagination, and an effort to expand the sphere of representation, he retarded the inevitable decline of Japanese art for decades, but as he was lacking in culture and sterling personality, and remained fast-bound among externals, he was neither able to lead art back to its former height nor to create a new and great style.
In addition to the data previously given concerning his individual works, we may here add the following.
Single sheets:—
- Actors, in yellow and a little pink, about 1778 (?).
- Kintoki between a monkey and a dog that is carrying his trunk; early.
- The same, with a bear and an eagle, black and white, medium size (Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum).
- A fisherman caught by a cuttle-fish, near by a youth laughing.
- Representations of wrestlers, about 1793.
- Triptych with scenes from the story of the Ronins; under the influence of Kiyonaga.
- A boat with the gods of fortune fishing; dating from the nineties.
- Kintoki embracing a bear, with an eagle perched on his shoulder, signed Shunro; under the influence of Kiyonaga.
- Dakki, the mistress of a Chinese tyrant, looking out from a window at a hangman holding up a child.
