Though he is best known in the West as a master of landscape printmaking, Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) not only designed prints of every subject, he also illustrated books and painted works ranging from formal screens and hanging scrolls to studies and sketches. The previously limited view of his art as a printmaker will be overturned by this exhibition, which provides an unprecedented opportunity to view the full range of Hokusai’s painting and to fully appreciate the diversity and talent of this major master of ukiyo-e. Charles Lang Freer (1854–1919) assembled an unmatched collection of paintings by Hokusai, and this exhibition celebrates the one-hundredth anniversary of Freer’s gift of Asian and American art to the people of the United States. Hokusai is the most comprehensive exhibition of Hokusai’s paintings since exhibitions at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1893, and in Tokyo in 1900. From September to December 2005, a major retrospective of Hokusai’s prints, including some of the paintings exhibited here, broke attendance records for ukiyo-e at the Tokyo National Museum; but Freer gathered the largest single collection of Hokusai paintings, and they could not be sent to Tokyo. Restrictions on Freer’s gift prevent their exhibition at other sites,...