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Pumpkin vine and horse fly
Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾北斎 (1760-1849)
ca. 1825-1833
- Medium
- Ink and color on silk
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- H x W (image): 35 × 54.4 cm (13 3/4 × 21 7/16 in)
- Culture
- Japanese
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Asian Art
- Credit line
- Gift of Charles Lang Freer
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Hokusai painted this small work after he reached the age of sixty. Its composition, brushwork, and color demonstrate perfect technical control. The inclusion of a flying insect resembles the formula that Hokusai adopted in his "Large Flowers" print series in the 1830s. This painting was among the first group of Hokusai works purchased by Charles Lang Freer in 1898. Freer had already developed a taste for the simple compositions and pleasing colors of paintings by artists such as Ogata Korin (1658-1716), who introduced a style of painting from Kyoto to Edo in the early eighteenth century.
