Asian Art and History

Lecture

Asian Art and History Hokusai Inspiration and Influence

Sarah E. Thompson, Ph.D., Curator of Japanese Art, Museum of Fine Arts

Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is the most famous of all Japanese artists, the designer of the color woodblock print nicknamed “The Great Wave” that has become a major icon of world art. His paintings, print designs and book illustrations have inspired artists in many fields for over two centuries. We will look at his interactions first with the teachers who shaped his own eclectic style, and then with his pupils (including his talented daughter), his rival artists in the competitive world of commercial printing, and the many artists around the globe who never met him in person but were influenced by his work, ranging from his own lifetime to the present.

This presentation is part of the Asian Art and History series.

Image: Annabeth Rosen, American, born in 1957. Wave, 2012. Glazed earthenware, steel wire, steel. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Museum purchase with funds donated by Martin and Deborah Hale, 2013.1469. © Annabeth Rosen

Sarah E. Thompson

Sarah E. Thompson

Sarah Thompson, Ph.D., is a curator of Japanese art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, one of four curators working with the largest collection of Japanese art outside Japan. With degrees in linguistics from Harvard and Japanese art from Columbia, she taught Japanese and Asian art history at Vassar College, Oberlin College and the University of Oregon before moving to the MFA in 2004. Her current specialty is Japanese prints: She has created an online digital catalogue of the MFA’s collection of over 50,000 Japanese prints and has curated numerous exhibitions at the MFA and elsewhere, including a Hokusai retrospective at the MFA in 2015 and Tattoos in Japanese Prints at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. Her recent book is titled Hokusai’s Landscapes: The Complete Series (MFA Publications, 2019).