Yōrō Waterfall in Mino Province, c.1832
Price range: $245.00 through $295.00
A column of white water drops out of the clouds as if it began in heaven, while pilgrims shelter on the rocks below. These falls were famous for a legend that their water tasted like sake, a gift to a devoted son caring for his old father.
The calmest of the set, it is all soft mist and strong verticals. It seems to slow a room down the moment it goes up.
Yōrō Waterfall in Mino Province, c.1832
The print
Print Quality: Gallery-standard archival pigment giclée, made to order
Media: 308gsm 100% cotton Hahnemühle Photo Rag
Texture & Tone: Super-matte, smooth chalky finish with soft, muted blacks
Longevity: Museum-grade, generational permanence
Photo Rag suits this woodblock especially well. Its smooth cotton surface adds no texture of its own, so the fine carved lines, the soft gradations of blue and the grain of Hokusai’s original sheet, nearly two centuries old, come through exactly as they are.
Sizes available:
30×45cm, 12×18″, fine art print, open edition
40×60cm, 16×24″, fine art print, open edition
Safe, tracked delivery guaranteed worldwide, with sustainable packaging.
The story
This print comes from A Tour of Waterfalls in Various Provinces (Shokoku taki meguri), sometimes called A Tour of Japanese Waterfalls: eight upright prints Hokusai designed around 1832 for Nishimuraya Yohachi (Eijudō), the Edo publisher of his Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. He was in his seventies, and signed them “Iitsu, formerly Hokusai”.
Yōrō Falls, in Mino Province (today’s Gifu Prefecture), are almost 30 metres high, and Hokusai shortened them to fit the sheet. Their fame rests on a tale of filial devotion: a son who brought water from the falls to his ailing father. The Worcester Art Museum points to Hokusai’s lavish use of imported Prussian blue, and to the silvery mist that seems to join the green cliffs above with the pilgrims below, as if the falls linked the everyday world with something higher.
