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Old Manji’s Cursive Picture Album (Manji-ō sōhitsu gafu)

Katsushika, Hokusai, 1760-1849 · 1843 · 11 pictures

Old Manji's Cursive Picture Album is a Japanese woodblock sketchbook by Katsushika Hokusai, published in 1843 for a general audience of artists and collectors. Its double-page spreads show quick ink studies of people, animals, plants and objects, each captioned in Japanese. A designer could take from them the economy of single-line brushwork, with bold silhouettes, loose hatching and a lot of empty paper around the figures.

Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art · No known copyright restrictions · More from this library