'Dragon' by Katsushika Hokusai, made for the Higashimachi festival in Obuse around 1844. This image is also available on:
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In the early 1840s Hokusai, now in his eighties, was facing a series of challenges. His studio in Edo (Tokyo) had been lost to fire in 1839, along with much of his recent work, and the government censors were cracking down on ukiyo-e print art as part of the Tenpo reforms against vice and luxury. More cuttingly, his work was starting to fall out of favor with the public as younger artists like Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando Hiroshige) muscled their way onto the scene with new styles and interpretations. Hokusai, ever adaptable, decided to leave Edo entirely and move to Obuse (105 miles away), where he could count on the patronage of his friend and former pupil Takai Kozan, a wealthy merchant and local landowner. The small country town might have seemed like a good place for an old man to relax a bit, but Hokusai had no intention of retiring.
In Obuse, no longer under pressure from censors, publishers, or public tastes, Hokusai had the time and freedom to take his art to new levels. He may have taken as much as six months to paint 'Dragon', which along with 'Phoenix' was made for the ceilings of festival floats (Japan has a long tradition of elaborate mobile shrines and festival floats). He then followed this up with an improved and massively enlarged version of 'Phoenix' on the ceiling of nearby Gansho-in Temple. All this was done in-between a constant output of new paintings. Unlike much of Hokusai's work, which was ukiyo-e art and thus destroyed in the printing process, the originals of 'Dragon' and 'Phoenix' still survive in the local museum, and Gansho-in Temple still stands with it's own version of 'Phoenix' flying resplendent over the great hall.
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