Fishing in the surf at Kajikazawa

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Inspired by: Katsushika Hokusai - Fishing in the surf at Kajikazawa

An Anglicized title for this print is “Fishing in the surf at Kajikazawa”. It was the first in the series, “Thirty Six Views of Mt Fuji”, the most famous of which was “The Great Wave of Kanagawa”. He started this series when he was 73, at the height of his career. He worked until he was 89 and felt he got better as he got older. Just before he died he wrote, “If only the heavens could grant me another five years I would become a great artist”.
The first impression of this print was all blue, but the number of colors was increased in later additions. Around 1790 the Dutch traders brought Prussian Blue pigments to Japan. At first this was very expensive, but by 1820 the price came down and the ukiyo-e began using it in their prints. Hokusai was one of the early adopters and the original version of many of his prints were all blue, including The Great Wave.  The Japanese called the new color Beru-ia, which comes from their word for Berlin, the city where the pigment was manufactured.
Like many of the Japanese artists of the era, Hokusai changed his name several times during his career. These changes often marked different stages of life, or it could have just been a way of refreshing the brand. By the time he got to the Mt Fuji series he was using the name Gakyo rojin (Old man crazy to paint). To see original: https://bit.ly/4fAztDn https://bit.ly/4fAztDn

Mary Stevenson Cassatt - The Tea

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Mary Stevenson Cassatt - The Tea

Tea parties were a real thing back in the day. Starting with Victorians, the afternoon tea was a daily event in any respectable well-off family. The fashion quickly spread all over Europe, and reached the US, during its Gilded Age (the period from the 1870s to about 1900). Here affluent families used teas as debutante parties.

Mary Cassatt was a great admirer of Edgar Degas. Both artists had a long period of collaboration. Cassatt said: "How well I remember seeing for the first-time Degas' pastels in the window of a picture dealer. I would flatten my nose against the window and absorb all I could of his art." Degas would help Cassatt get models for her work. Here one of those models was the woman sitting with Cassatt’s sister Lydia.

Gustave Caillebotte - Paris Street; Rainy Day

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Inspired by: Gustave Caillebotte - Paris Street; Rainy Day

This painting depicts the aftermath of Baron Haussmann’s controversial plan to renovate Paris. His wide boulevards replaced many of the beloved buildings of the city. Caillebotte was in the camp of those who hated his plan, and what it would do to the Parisians. The scene is a grey rainy day, the colors almost monochromatic, which instills a glum feeling in his figures. The canvas is monumental, almost eight feet across, which allows you to study the individual characters. and some are quite whimsical. Two legs of a man appear under an umbrella, there is a man carrying a ladder through the streets, and a woman who is opening an umbrella which seems to be shoved it into the head of the main character. Caillebotte was very wealthy. His father made a fortune supplying Napoleon's army with uniforms, and Gustave inherited that fortune at age 26. He was a close friend of many of the Impressionists, and funded and curated their exhibitions. He loaned them money (in fact, he paid the rent on Monet's studio for a while.) Most importantly, he bought their paintings for top dollar, amassing a collection of more than seventy works of Impressionist friends. His death at the young age of forty-five brought an abrupt end to an evolving career. He donated his Impressionist paintings as well as many of his own to the French State. The bequest specified that all the works should be displayed in the Louvre Museum. This was somewhat problematic, as his art was still not accepted widely by the mainstream artistic establishment.

To see original: https://bit.ly/4bw3KlE