The archive / Ukiyo-e / Red Fuji (South Wind, Clear Sky)
Red Fuji (South Wind, Clear Sky)
Katsushika Hokusai · 1760–1849
3 variations + a matched story print, every standard frame ratio. sRGB · up to 300 DPI · personal-use license.
Print it your way — at home, a local shop, or a gallery print delivered to your door. See the printing guide →
Sizes in the download
Print-ready files at every standard frame ratio below — the full image, nothing cropped:
The print is crisp at 300 DPI up to about 24×36″, and stays sharp at 150 DPI from across the room, out to about 40×60″.
[ Will it fit your frame? ]
The work
The same mountain, in a different key.
The volcano stands alone, reddened against a blue sky streaked with cloud. Its Japanese title, Gaifū kaisei, names a real moment: in early autumn, when the wind blows from the south and the sky is clear, the dawn sun can turn the snow-bare peak red. The print belongs to Hokusai's Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, the same celebrated series as The Great Wave. This is the calm one.
Look closer
Before “Red Fuji,” there was “Pink Fuji.”
A 2019 British Museum study set the bold red impressions everyone knows beside a rarer, muted version and concluded the muted Pink Fuji was printed first. It used costlier pigments, including orpiment, and shaded the mountain from green at the base to brown at the summit, a refinement too fussy for mass production. Later runs flattened the scheme to a cheaper, stronger red. That red gave the print its nickname.
Why it matters
In Japan, the quiet one is the favourite.
The grain of the cherry-wood block is pressed right into the paper, so the mountain carries the wood's own texture alongside the red. Abroad, The Great Wave is the image everyone knows. In Japan this serene Fuji is often held the more esteemed of the two. The craft is in that detail you almost miss.
It seems highly likely that this print, nicknamed Pink Fuji, is a first edition.— Capucine Korenberg, British Museum conservation scientist, 2019
The file & the facts
- Title
- Red Fuji (South Wind, Clear Sky)
- Artist
- Katsushika Hokusai
- Year
- c. 1831
- Medium
- Woodblock print
- Original
- 25.6 × 37.5 cm
- Collection
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
- Rights
- Public-domain print · open access · The Cleveland Museum of Art — Bequest of Edward L. Whittemore, 1930.189 (CC0, courtesy)
- File
- sRGB · JPEG · 150–300 DPI
