Japanese Owl, Album of Sketches

Katsushika Hokusai

Woodblock print; ink on paper

British Museum

This image of a Japanese owl is drawn from Hokusai's celebrated Album of Sketches, known in Japanese as the Hokusai Manga, first published in 1814. The work belongs to a monumental multi-volume compendium of thousands of woodblock-printed sketches encompassing landscapes, flora, fauna, and figures of daily life, block-printed in black, gray, and pale flesh tones. Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849), one of the preeminent masters of the ukiyo-e tradition, created the Manga as both a drawing manual for students and an encyclopedic visual record of the natural and human world during Japan's Edo period. The owl study exemplifies Hokusai's acute observational skill and his ability to render the natural world with concise, expressive brushwork characteristic of his mature style.