The Great Wave off Kanagawa was first exhibited in the West in 1862. Its appearance in London helped introduce Hokusai and Japanese ukiyo-e to Western audiences during a period of growing international interest in Japanese art.
The print had been produced in Japan decades earlier, around 1830–1832, as part of Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. It was therefore not a newly created Western exhibition piece in 1862. Instead, the London showing presented an Edo-period Japanese woodblock print to viewers who were only beginning to encounter Japanese visual culture directly.
The date is easy to confuse with later landmark events. Japan’s official participation in the 1867 Paris Exposition played an important role in spreading Japanese art in France, while the 1870s and 1880s saw Japonisme become increasingly influential among European artists and collectors.
By the time Van Gogh and other modern artists encountered ukiyo-e, The Great Wave had become part of a wider cultural exchange. Its unusual perspective, cropped forms, and vivid Prussian blue offered European artists alternatives to conventional academic composition.