Katsushika Hokusai

The printmaker who made Japanese art legible to Europe, largely by accident. Ukiyo-e prints were cheap popular goods in Edo, used as packing material for exported porcelain, and it was in that packing that French painters first saw them. His flattened space and cropped compositions reached Degas, Monet and Van Gogh, which is why a commercial Japanese woodblock tradition sits behind Impressionism.

• Lived: 1760 CE – 1849 CE
• Nationality: japanese
• Roles: painter, printmaker