An Anglicized title for this print is “Fishing in the surf at Kajikazawa”. This print was the first in the series, “Thirty Six Views of Mt Fuji”. The most famous print in this series was “The Great Wave of Kanagawa”. These images were sold as travel postcards.
The first impression of this print was all blue. The number of colors was increased in later additions. Hokusai was one of the early adopters of this auzuri-e technique (idigo technique). The development of the process is associated with the import of the pigment Prussian blue from Europe. Artists rarely carved their own woodblocks for printing and instead production was divided between: the artist, the carver, the printer. All printing was done by hand, allowing for effects like blending or gradation of colors, which weren't achievable using machines.
The French composer Claude Debussy's tone poem La Mer, is believed to have been inspired by Hokusai's print The Great Wave. The composer had an impression of it hanging in his living room and specifically requested that it be used on the cover of the published score.
To see original: https://bit.ly/47c7CYX
Winslow Homer - The Fog Warning
Homer lived in Boston until his early twenties. He was mostly self-taught. His mother, a gifted watercolorist, got him started. After a short apprenticeship with a commercial lithographer, he began his career in illustration. For the next twenty years, he made his living working for magazines like Harper’s Weekly. He subsequently picked up a paint brush. His love was oils, but his watercolors were cheaper, they sold well, and brought him greater recognition.
He loved the ocean, and in the 1880s, he moved to Prouts Neck on the coast of Maine. It was here that he began to paint his water scenes. He not only painted the sea itself, but pitted "man against the elements" to show how powerful the water could be. He later stopped painting human figures all together and just focused on the sea. Today, Homer is known as the foremost American marine painter.
This painting was inspired by a trip to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Canada. There, aboard fishing vessels, he watched men, cast adrift on the open sea, take their chance with the waves and weather. To see the original painting: https://bit.ly/4hSO2DK