Photo: Public Domain

Katsushika Hokusai was a Japanese painter and printmaker of the Edo period (1603-1868), during which Japanese society enjoyed a period of flourishing arts and culture under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate. Hokusai’s most notable woodblock print series, “Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji,” was published in 1831 and includes “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” (seen above), which depicts an enormous wave looming over boats off the coast of Kanagawa (modern-day Yokohama, Japan).

The style of “The Great Wave” differed from contemporary artists’ works, which replicated objects as they appeared to the eye. Hokusai’s piece broke from convention by emphasizing movement, depicting different qualities and shades of light, and using open composition (in which subjects extend off the canvas). This style later influenced Western artists Edouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Claude Monet.

French music composer Claude Debussy collected Japanese artwork while studying in Rome and owned a copy of “The Great Wave.” His musical work “La Mer” (“The Sea”) was directly influenced by the piece. In fact, the cover of the first sheet music included a modified version of Hokusai’s art.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art expands: “The ferocious height and terrifying form of Hokusai’s wave are amplified by his use of the then-rare ‘Prussian blue’ and a jarring sense of perspective that keeps the eye from focusing on the print’s primary subject, Mount Fuji. As such, Debussy’s sea isn’t composed of cymbal crashes and fluttering flutes that allude to a literal oceanic sound, but instead the composer uses a group of sixteen cellos (twice the number found in a standard orchestra) to breathe life into a heaving, slowly blossoming chorale in the first movement, and pentatonic harmonies to create a sense of the ocean’s vast expanse.”

As an exercise, listen to this musical piece while viewing Hokusai’s “The Great Wave.” Recordings of “La Mer” can be found online or at your local library.