The 'Red Fuji' is both a masterpiece of decisive asymmetrical design and at the same time is incredibly restrained in its simplicity: Hokusai has outlined the shape of the mountain and virtually nothing else, and yet this image has captured the very essence of the Japanese landscape, and for almost two hundred years it has been considered a major work of art, not just in Japan but throughout the world, as evidenced by the importance ascribed to it by early art critics such as Theodore Duret and Samuel Bing and the French collectors Louis Gonse and Edmond de Goncourt
For other impressions see
Kobayashi Tadashi, Ukiyo-e Taikei, (Tokyo, 1975), vol. 13, no. 2-1 (from the Takahashi Seiichiro collection)
Richard Lane, Hokusai, Life and Work, (New York, 1979) pl.254 (from the Shinjo collection)
Matthi Forrer, Hokusai, Prints and Drawings, Royal Academy of Arts, (London, 1991), no.12
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Hokusai and Hiroshige, Great Japanese Prints from the James A. Michener Collection in the Honolulu Academy of Arts (San Francisco, 1998), no.7