A great wave print: Hokusai's wave and how to hang it.

The Great Wave in a few facts

Most people searching for a great wave print mean one picture: Under the Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai. It was published around 1831 as part of his series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, when Hokusai was in his early seventies, in Edo, the city now called Tokyo.

It was never a single painting. It is a colour woodblock print, made to be sold cheaply in large numbers, and the sheet is small, only about 26 by 38 centimetres. Many impressions survive, and museums across the world hold them, which is why the image feels so familiar.

Its strong blue came partly from Prussian blue, a synthetic pigment that had only recently become available in Japan. That deep, lasting colour helped the series sell and changed the look of Japanese landscape prints.

How a woodblock print was made

Ukiyo-e prints were a team effort. A publisher commissioned the design, the artist drew it in ink, and a carver pasted the drawing onto a block of cherry wood and cut away everything except the lines. That key block printed the outline; further blocks, one for each colour, were carved to match.

The printer then laid damp paper on each inked block in turn, rubbing the back with a flat pad, and used small registration marks to keep the colours aligned. Because blocks wore down with use, early impressions are crisper than later ones, which is one reason museums prize them.

Paper mattered too. Printers used tough washi made from mulberry bark, which could take repeated rubbing without tearing. When you choose a great wave print today, a matte, slightly fibrous fine art paper is the closest modern match and keeps the blues deep rather than shiny.

Reading the picture

The genius of the composition is scale. A huge wave rears up in the foreground and breaks into claw-like fingers of foam, while three long boats with their rowers crouch in the troughs. Far behind, Mount Fuji appears small and snow-capped, caught inside the curve of the water as if it were another wave.

Look at any great wave print and the eye follows the same route: up the rising wall of water, over the curling crest, down onto the boats and across to the mountain. That movement is why it works on a wall. It reads at once from across a room and still holds detail up close.

Our great wave print, reimagined in gold

The Golden Wave tells the scene in line alone. Thousands of fine gold strokes, laid side by side, build the breaking wave and a smaller second wave below it on deep navy, with tiny gold specks in the sky like spray.

The Great Wave in Cream & Gold is the lighter version: the wave in navy and blue-grey with cream foam, a warm cream-peach sky, Fuji small and pale inside the curve, and a little red sun as the only warm accent.

From the same series, The Golden Red Fuji shows the mountain turned red by the morning sun, a broad slope under a navy sky with thin gold veins running down its flanks. Moonlit Fuji is an original night view in Hokusai's spirit, with a huge gold moon behind a snowy peak and pine islands on a glowing lake.

Building a Japanese wall around the wave

The wave pairs naturally with prints by Utagawa Hiroshige, the other great landscape artist of the period, whose One Hundred Famous Views of Edo appeared between 1856 and 1858. Golden Rain on the Bridge turns his famous sudden shower into slanting gold lines over a long wooden bridge, with small figures hurrying under umbrellas. The Golden Plum Garden pushes a gnarled plum trunk thick with white blossom right to the front, against a coral and gold sky.

For a softer group, add Golden Cranes at Sunrise, two white cranes with red crowns crossing a large gold disc, or Golden Koi, two gold fish circling on deep indigo water. Keep the frames identical and the gaps even, and three or four works will read as one calm, connected wall.

Size, frame and placement

The original sheet is small, but a great wave print can be much larger, because the composition is bold. Every work is a printable download; the portrait files at 7168 × 10752 px print sharply to about 60 × 90 cm. Printed versions are available on the site, and each download includes a Frame TV version.

Thin black or natural wood frames suit Japanese prints, with a generous pale mount in the manner of museum display. Its centre belongs at roughly 145 to 150 centimetres above the floor. The wave brings energy, so it works in a hallway, a study or above a sofa, while the night views suit a bedroom.