Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai created an astounding number of marvelous works, many of which were prints. He began his illustrious career as a printmaker, but in his 30s he started to paint, eventually leaving printmaking behind in his late 60s and early 70s in order to concentrate on his painting.
In the exhibition “Hokusai:’Mad About Painting” at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art (the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery), 120 of Hokusai’s works are on display from Charles Lang Freer’s collection. Freer’s collection is the world’s largest collection of Hokusai’s paintings, drawings, and sketches.
