The Great Wave off Kanagawa

A colossal wave rears up and curls into clawing fingers of foam, about to crash down on three slender boats whose rowers cling on, while far away in the trough sits the small, serene cone of Mount Fuji. Hokusai's woodblock print, from his series Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji, uses imported Prussian blue and a daring, cropped design to pit the fury of the sea against the calm of the sacred mountain. The most famous of all Japanese images, it swept into Europe and helped ignite the craze for Japanese art among the Impressionists.