Melbourne visit august 2017

My visit to Melbourne coincided with the Hokusai exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Although not all of this 19th century Japanese artist and printmaker's work was on exhibition, the number of works there showed how prolific his work was. He was a very humble man who said:
  From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the forms of things.
  By the time I was fifty I had published an infinity of designs; but all I produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account.
  At seventy-three I learnt a little about the structure of nature, of animals, plants, trees, birds, fish and insects.
  Consequently, by the time I am eighty I will have made still more progress; at ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at one hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvellous stage; when I am one hundred and ten everything I do be it a dot or a line will be alive.
 I beg those who live as long as I to see I keep my word.

       'I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign myself "The Old Man Mad About Drawing"' 
       Katsushika Hokusai 1834

Sorry about the reflection of the exit sign on the print!! This is Hokusai's Great Wave, made famous around the world as part of his scenes depicting Mt Fuji.

One of Hokusai's Waterfall series.