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Boy fishing from the limb of a tree
Katsushika Hokusai 葛飾北斎 (1760-1849)
1839
- Medium
- Ink and color on silk
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- H x W (image): 77.1 × 29.9 cm (30 3/8 × 11 3/4 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
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Hokusai’s work abounds with sympathetic portrayals of people of all ages engaged in mundane activities. In this painting, Hokusai captures a young fisherman in action. The boy clings to a tree with his legs and one hand while lowering his fishing rod toward the water. A basket hangs beside him. The artist’s mastery of the brush can be seen in his control of ink tonalities and his ability to render form with a few brushstrokes. A slight tremor in some of the brushstrokes appears in this and other paintings from Hokusai’s last decade.
