Low Bid for Jitendra Singh's Collection of Hokusai's Mount Fuji Prints

Katsushika Hokusai’s Great Wave. Courtesy Tokyo Museum

March 19, 2024

A full set of woodblock prints by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai, titled 36 Views of Mount Fuji, sold for $3.6 million at an auction today at Christie's in New York. Owned by Jitendra Singh, it was the first complete set of Mount Fuji prints to be auctioned in 22 years.

The set, published between 1830 and 1833, sold at the low end of the $3 to $5 million estimate. Prior to the auction, media reports suggested the winning bid would exceed $5 million. This is because a copy of one of the prints in the set, The Great Wave, fetched $2.8 million at an auction in 2023, a record for the artist. The print, which inspired numerous artists, is one of the most widely reproduced images in the world.

Hokusai, who spent nearly all his life ( 1760-1849) in Edo, modern-day Tokyo, was known for his prints, paintings and book illustrations. He was one of the ukiyo-e artists, which literally means drawing "pictures of the floating world", a reference to the transient pleasures and entertainment that the city offered. The typical subjects for the pictures were Kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, courtesans, bathhouses, pavilions and theatres. While Kabuki actors and beautiful women were amongst the genre’s most popular subjects, Hokusai also printed landscapes.

Hokusai is estimated to have produced 30,000 artworks. His prints, which were inexpensive and sold in bulk in Edo, were available in Europe and the United States in large numbers in the mid-19th century. His work, especially The Great Wave and Red Fuji,  influenced numerous artists including Vincent van Gogh, Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; also modern artists including Andy Warhol.

Probably Hokusai's most celebrated work is the set of prints 36 Views of Mount Fuji: Initially the set consisted of 36 prints depicting the sacred Japanese peak from different viewpoints in different seasons. After the series became popular, Hokusai added 10 more prints. Since the 12th century, Mount Fuji has been the centre of training for ascetic Buddhism, the faith of most Japanese. 

(Photo:Jitendra Singh. 2014. Courtesy Wharton.)

 “I have a thing about mountains,” Singh told The New York Times in an interview published before the auction. He trekked at high altitudes on Mount Everest and Mount Kailash. Drawn to Hokusai's images, Singh started collecting the 46 images in 2013, completing it in January 2023 at a cost of about $3 million. 

Jitendra V (JV) Singh, 70 years old, is a U.S. citizen who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He grew up in Lucknow, India, one of 11 children from his father's three marriages. His father was a civil servant. 

Singh was the Dean of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Earlier he taught at the Wharton School, Philadelphia, from 1987 to 2014, including as the Vice-Dean, International Academic Affairs, 1998 to 2001.  His research interests include strategy and organization, with an emphasis on multinational corporations, emerging economies, organizational evolution, and entrepreneurship.

He has advised companies from start-ups to venture capital firms and India's Infosys Technologies, a leading global software firm. He also served on the Board of Governors at SAFTI Military Institute, Singapore. 

Singh earned a PhD from Stanford University and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, 1975. He is the author of four books and published over 45 papers in journals. 

Singh believed collecting the full set of Mount Fuji prints would also help him financially, he told the New York Times. In 2002, a full set of prints was last sold at a Sotheby's Paris auction for $1.5 million. 

Some of the prints in Singh's "set are earlier impressions, while others are later impressions. This series was not issued as a set but rather was published in several installments," Takaaki Murakami, the head of Christie's Japanese and Korean art department in New York, told Kyodo News..

 Hokusai started working on his Mount Fuji prints at the age of 70. In 1834, when he was 75, he stated in a postscript to volume one of his illustrated book One Hundred Views of Mt Fuji: "...until the age of 70, nothing I drew was worthy of notice. At 73 years I was somewhat able to fathom the growth of plants and trees, and the structure of birds, animals, insects and fish. Thus when I reach 80 years, I hope to have made increasing progress, and at 90 to see further into the underlying principles of things, so that at 100 years I will have achieved a divine state in my art, and at 110, every dot and every stroke will be as though alive. Those of you who live long enough, bear witness that these words of mine are not false."

Katsushika Hokusai’s Red Fuji. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

FOR UNIQUE STORIES EACH WEEK SUBSCRIBE VIA SUBSTACK. Or email: gitimescontact@gmail.com

(c) All rights reserved. Copyright under United States Laws