Its full name is Under the Wave off Kanagawa.
It is a woodblock print — not a painting — from a series called Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji.
Hokusai was 71 years old when he designed it.
Mount Fuji is in the background, tiny and calm, while the wave is about to destroy three fishing boats.
The blue is Prussian blue — a synthetic pigment that had just arrived in Japan from Europe.
Hokusai embraced it immediately.
The colour transformed Japanese printmaking.
The composition — the curl of the wave framing the distant mountain — is so perfectly judged that it has been reproduced more than almost any other image in the history of art.
Fun fact: Hokusai changed his name over 30 times during his career.
He believed a new name reset his artistic energy.
At 75, he wrote: 'If only Heaven will give me five more years, I will become a real painter.'
He died at 88.
