Hokusai: Great Picture Book of Everything

In a world-first this autumn, a group of rare drawings by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai will go on display at the Museum.

The drawings, depicting scenes from ancient China, Buddhist India and the natural world, were produced in the 1820-40s for an illustrated encyclopaedia called The Great Picture Book of Everything. However, for reasons unknown, the book was never published, saving these exceptional works from being destroyed as part of the woodblock printing process.

Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) is considered by many to be Japan’s greatest artist. During his seventy-year career, he produced a considerable oeuvre of some 3,000 colour prints, illustrations for over 200 books, hundreds of drawings and over 1,000 paintings. These 103 exciting and exquisite small drawings were made for an unpublished book called Great Picture Book of Everything – featuring wide-ranging subjects from depictions of religious, mythological, historical and literary figures to animals, birds, flowers and other natural phenomena, as well as landscapes. They are dominated by subjects that relate to ancient China and India, and also Southeast and Central Asia. Many subjects found in the collection are not found in previous Hokusai works, including fascinating imaginings of the origin of human culture in ancient China.

This beautifully produced book draws on the latest research, illustrating the complete set of drawings, published for the first time.