Iconic ‘Great Wave’ Print Sells for $2.8 Million at Christie’s

“To contemporary guys, it’s nothing to spend over $1 million to own an absolute icon,” said Sebastian Izzard, a longtime Japanese prints dealer in New York. “Hokusai has become a big deal.”

One of the most famous images in Asian art, the “Great Wave” poised to crest claw-like onto a trio of tiny boats with Mount Fuji in the distance has proven wildly popular since the artist created it at the age of 70 during the waning years of isolationist Edo, now Tokyo. Although intended to appeal to everyday audiences in Japan who bought and swapped such prints for small sums, Hokusai’s “Great Wave” influenced rivals like Utagawa Hiroshige and Utagawa Kuniyoshi, who soon attempted their own tsunami scenes, including the latter’s circa-1835 “Monk Nichiren Calming the Stormy Sea,” now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hokusai’s “Great Wave” eventually made its way out of cloistered Japan—likely as a sailor’s souvenir—and made an equally big splash among artists in Europe. Curators credit the “Great Wave” with helping inspire Claude Monet’s roiling coastal seascapes as well as Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” who substituted the wave itself in his composition for roiling, moonlit clouds. Claude Debussy’s three symphonic sketches from 1905, “The Sea,” also took Hokusai’s work as their muse. 

The “Great Wave” remains a paragon of popular culture today, reproduced on everything from calendars to carpets to the cover of Gabrielle Zevin’s current bestselling novel, “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.” On Tuesday, Google listed around 125 million search results for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”; the search engine logged nearly 1.4 billion hits for the “Great Wave.” 

Despite this ubiquity, versions of Hokusai’s masterpiece still tend to sell for a fraction of anything painted by Monet—and that price gap largely explains why the “Great Wave” appeals to younger, international collectors, said Takaaki Murakami, head of Japanese and Korean art at Christie’s New York. 

“With the ‘Great Wave,’ new buyers come out of the blue,” Mr. Murakami said.

Wading into the Hokusai market requires navigating the vagaries of the prints market. Whereas paintings are prized as being one of a kind, the “Great Wave” was printed in untold multiples over several decades, with print runs extending long after Hokusai died in 1849. Hokusai, hailed as a celebrity in Edo during his lifetime for his detailed depictions of Japanese landscapes, was commissioned by publisher Nishimuraya Yohachi to create the “Great Wave.” But once the artist signed off on its woodblock design, the publisher had free rein to issue as many copies as possible. It’s unclear how many “Waves” exist in the world, so collectors must be wary of potential fakes. 

Mr. Izzard said he’s probably sold 40 versions of the “Great Wave” over the course of his career, with prices easily tripling over the past decade for worthy versions, he said. The most recent version surpassed a “Great Wave” sold at Christie’s in 2021 for $1.5 million, over its $250,000 high estimate.

He said collectors tend to pay more for “Great Wave” prints whose lines remain crisply sharp because it means they were printed on the woodblock early on—as opposed to later, fuzzier versions created once the block itself had worn down from use. Another way to tell: Early versions, like the one Christie’s sold, show the subtle outline of a cloud against a pale pink sky. 

Collectors also rank Hokusai’s works higher if the prints aren’t torn or creased, and Christie’s “Great Wave” was never folded, Mr. Murakami said. The anonymous family selling the work bought it in the early 1900s, he added, and it helped that they hadn’t moved it much since.

Mr. Murakami said Tuesday’s “Wave” was also spared attempts to touch up its quivering black outlines or fill in its Prussian blue ink—a deep indigo hue that defined Hokusai’s series of “Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji,” a paean to the mountain that the artist saw as sacred. 

Savvy collectors know the artist actually created 46 distinct views, with Japanese collectors long preferring a different scene from the series known as “Red Fuji,” Mr. Izzard said. “Red Fuji” prints have sold at auction for as much as $1.4 million, according to auction database

Artnet.

But Mr. Izzard said for whatever reason, curators and collectors in the West—and now, China—tend to gravitate to the Hokusai they know best, the “Great Wave.” 

“Hokusai is the Japanese equivalent of Rembrandt,” he said, “and this is his icon.”

Write to Kelly Crow at [email protected]

“To contemporary guys, it’s nothing to spend over $1 million to own an absolute icon,” said Sebastian Izzard, a longtime Japanese prints dealer in New York. “Hokusai has become a big deal.”

One of the most famous images in Asian art, the “Great Wave” poised to crest claw-like onto a trio of tiny boats with Mount Fuji in the distance has proven wildly popular since the artist created it at the age of 70 during the waning years of isolationist Edo, now Tokyo. Although intended to appeal to everyday audiences in Japan who bought and swapped such prints for small sums, Hokusai’s “Great Wave” influenced rivals like Utagawa Hiroshige and Utagawa Kuniyoshi, who soon attempted their own tsunami scenes, including the latter’s circa-1835 “Monk Nichiren Calming the Stormy Sea,” now owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hokusai’s “Great Wave” eventually made its way out of cloistered Japan—likely as a sailor’s souvenir—and made an equally big splash among artists in Europe. Curators credit the “Great Wave” with helping inspire Claude Monet’s roiling coastal seascapes as well as Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” who substituted the wave itself in his composition for roiling, moonlit clouds. Claude Debussy’s three symphonic sketches from 1905, “The Sea,” also took Hokusai’s work as their muse. 

The “Great Wave” remains a paragon of popular culture today, reproduced on everything from calendars to carpets to the cover of Gabrielle Zevin’s current bestselling novel, “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.” On Tuesday, Google listed around 125 million search results for Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa”; the search engine logged nearly 1.4 billion hits for the “Great Wave.” 

Despite this ubiquity, versions of Hokusai’s masterpiece still tend to sell for a fraction of anything painted by Monet—and that price gap largely explains why the “Great Wave” appeals to younger, international collectors, said Takaaki Murakami, head of Japanese and Korean art at Christie’s New York. 

“With the ‘Great Wave,’ new buyers come out of the blue,” Mr. Murakami said.

Wading into the Hokusai market requires navigating the vagaries of the prints market. Whereas paintings are prized as being one of a kind, the “Great Wave” was printed in untold multiples over several decades, with print runs extending long after Hokusai died in 1849. Hokusai, hailed as a celebrity in Edo during his lifetime for his detailed depictions of Japanese landscapes, was commissioned by publisher Nishimuraya Yohachi to create the “Great Wave.” But once the artist signed off on its woodblock design, the publisher had free rein to issue as many copies as possible. It’s unclear how many “Waves” exist in the world, so collectors must be wary of potential fakes. 

Mr. Izzard said he’s probably sold 40 versions of the “Great Wave” over the course of his career, with prices easily tripling over the past decade for worthy versions, he said. The most recent version surpassed a “Great Wave” sold at Christie’s in 2021 for $1.5 million, over its $250,000 high estimate.

He said collectors tend to pay more for “Great Wave” prints whose lines remain crisply sharp because it means they were printed on the woodblock early on—as opposed to later, fuzzier versions created once the block itself had worn down from use. Another way to tell: Early versions, like the one Christie’s sold, show the subtle outline of a cloud against a pale pink sky. 

Collectors also rank Hokusai’s works higher if the prints aren’t torn or creased, and Christie’s “Great Wave” was never folded, Mr. Murakami said. The anonymous family selling the work bought it in the early 1900s, he added, and it helped that they hadn’t moved it much since.

Mr. Murakami said Tuesday’s “Wave” was also spared attempts to touch up its quivering black outlines or fill in its Prussian blue ink—a deep indigo hue that defined Hokusai’s series of “Thirty-six views of Mount Fuji,” a paean to the mountain that the artist saw as sacred. 

Savvy collectors know the artist actually created 46 distinct views, with Japanese collectors long preferring a different scene from the series known as “Red Fuji,” Mr. Izzard said. “Red Fuji” prints have sold at auction for as much as $1.4 million, according to auction database

Artnet.

But Mr. Izzard said for whatever reason, curators and collectors in the West—and now, China—tend to gravitate to the Hokusai they know best, the “Great Wave.” 

“Hokusai is the Japanese equivalent of Rembrandt,” he said, “and this is his icon.”

Write to Kelly Crow at [email protected]