Martin Sharp - The Lost Hokusai
Abstract: On 9 November 2024 Australian artist Martin Sharp's former carer Angelica Frances Tremblay posted on Facebook an image of an original artwork by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (c.1760-1849) that Sharp had found in Paris during the winter of 1974 (illustrated at right). The work was subsequently stolen around 1976 upon arrival in Tokyo for appraisal. This stolen work eventually found its way into the collection of American Gillett Griffin who, in 2007, donated it to the Princeton University Library, where it remains to the present day. An account of the work is given, outlining Sharp's discovery, his reaction to the loss of a much treasured item, the making of copies in screenprint and paint, and the original work's place in Hokusai's oeuvre and the broader Ukiyo-e genre of Japanese art of the Tokugawa or Edo period (1603-1868).
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Contents
- Introduction
- Finding a Hokusai
- The Princeton work
- Painting or print?
- Sharp / Coburn print 1979
- Sharp / Lewis painting 1990+
- Sharp & Hokusai
- Abalone divers in art
- Genuine or fake?
- Stolen, not lost?
- References
- Acknowledgements
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1. Introduction
During 2006 an exhibition of works by Australian artists Peter Kingston (1943-2022) and Martin Sharp (1942-2013) called Notes from the River Caves was held at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Included in the show was a large painting by Sharp and Tim Lewis, simply titled Abalone. Associated with the creation of the work - which remained in the possession of the artist until his death in 2013 - was an intriguing story, briefly described as follows in the River Caves exhibition catalogue:
Martin Sharp, Abalone 1990-2006, coloured pencil, ink, synthetic polymer paint on canvas. Private [Martin Sharp] collection.
In 1973, Sharp discovered a print which he believed was an unknown work by the Japanese Ukiyo-e master Katsushika Hokusai. The print, now lost, depicted one of Japan's legendary Ama abalone divers who, like her sisters, stick in hand, would hold her breath and dive up to 10 metres to prise the valuable molluscs from the rocks. The Ama were often depicted in erotic, eighteenth-century woodblock prints by Utamaro Kitagawa. Working from a reproduction of the 'lost' Ama print and assisted by his long-standing collaborator Tim Lewis, in this greatly magnified version Sharp has painstakingly recorded the delicate line work and brilliant modulations of colour which distinguish the prints of Hokusai, an artist he has long admired. Hokusai's most famous work, In the hollow of a wave off the coast at Kanagawa, from the series Thirty six views of Mount Fuji, had been adopted in one of Sharp's most recognisable images, The Wave. This drawing featured R.B. Clark's comic-strip character, the quintessential Australian simpleton Boofhead, about to be overwhelmed by the approaching wall of water. It was penned by Sharp for The Australian newspaper, in response to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's meeting with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in Beijing in 1971, the first Australian political leader to visit China. (Art Gallery of New South Wales 2006)
The Abalone painting is dated 1990-2006, indicating an aspect of Sharp's art during his latter years, namely the tendency to work on paintings over a lengthy period of time. Begun in 1990, and housed in the studio at his Sydney residence Wirian, Abalone was regularly worked on prior to the exhibition of 2006. The present writer recalls seeing the painting at Wirian during 2017, following the artist's death. A Facebook posting during early November 2024 brought this back to his attention, for reasons outlined below. However, it is best to begin at the beginning, and that is when Sharp found the original lost Hokusai.
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2. Finding a Hokusai
Martin Sharp discovered the original abalone diver artwork back in a Paris print shop during the northern winter of 1974, not 1973 as stated in the River Caves catalogue entry. It should be noted that in his own subsequent reminiscences of the event, some of which are reproduced below, Sharp was unclear on the precise date. Nevertheless, he notes how he was very excited at the time of the discovery, and quickly came to believe that it was an original and unknown or lost Hokusai. This was based primarily on a signature located within the lower right corner of the work and the opinion of Hokusai experts he consulted in Paris and London at the time. Journalist and writer Lowell Tarling interviewed Sharp on a number of occasions from the 1980s through to just prior to his death in 2013 , and during that period various mentions were made therein of Sharp's ongoing interest - 'hobby' - in the collecting of Japanese woodblock prints and art of the Tokugawa or Edo period between approximately 1603-1868, with a specific emphasis on the work of its most prominent exponent, Katsushika Hokusai. Arising out of the interviews, Tarling published the following summary account of Sharp's search for prints during the visit to Paris in 1974:
Martin walked the streets of Paris in his spare time, checking out art shops. He described one defining moment: 'I was very interested in Japanese prints. It was my hobby. I'd see if I could find any anywhere, because they were still rather cheap. In Rue de Banque I found this little shop that sold Japanese pictures. There was a big pile on the floor. I was looking through 200 of them. I was particularly interested in Hokusai. I recognised some by Hokusai, various other prints, and right at the bottom there was this fantastic picture, the best by far of the pile - which was full of excellent material. It was the abalone diver.
Abalone divers are always women. They used to work from boats, dive down, cut the abalone off the rocks and come up again. And here's this most graceful Arabesque figure, a beautiful print. The shape of the hair reminded me of the curl of the stars in [Vincent van Gogh's] Starry Night. I thought, It looks like Utamaro. I asked her how much it was. It was 200 francs. I didn't have the money at the time but when I got the money I went back and picked up the print. I was very thrilled with it. I took it to a more up-market Japanese print shop. I showed her this print and she said, 'Oh, this is by Hokusai!' I couldn't believe this stroke of amazing luck, finding a Hokusai - and one that I'd never seen before.
I finished the mural, did one more in a shop somewhere, went back to London, and took it to the Victoria and Albert Museum. Walking in with it wrapped up under my arm, people were reacting in a strange way to me as I was walking through the corridors, as if they sensed that I had a very rare picture under my arm. I wanted to get it identified. The guy in the Oriental Art section turned up a reference to it in a book called Decorative Arts of Japan by an American woman published in about 1920. He said he knew the great English expert on Hokusai, Joseph Hillier. He said he'd check with him. I went back some weeks later. He said he checked with this scholar and it might be a drawing after a painting by Hokusai or a print after a painting by Hokusai, but it wasn't by Hokusai. He offered me a small amount of money for it, which I refused. I brought it back to Australia.' (Tarling 2016 & 2017)
A slight variation on these reminiscences was provided to the author by Sharp's friend and carer Angelica Frances Tremblay, as follows:
I was painting a small mural .... I loved Japanese wood block prints. I loved the difference .... the clarity. The whole aesthetic. I especially loved Hokusai. I would stay in a small hotel on the Rue du Bac .... nearby was a shop that dealt in Japanese prints. One day I inspected the stock. I was looking at the tall prints made of two sheets of paper. I found right on the bottom of this pile of prints a most beautiful figure of an abalone diver .... my immediate thought was "this could be by Utamaro." The diver is so elegant .... I placed a reserve on the print and eventually paid it off, although it was not expensive. I took it to a lady who ran a more established gallery for Japanese prints by the Seine....
The following is the complete text of the Tarling interview with Sharp on 16 January 1991. Though it replicates much of what was published, it also includes important additional material, such as the present of a Hokusai signature on the original work.
Interview: 16 January 1991
Questions about the Lost Hokusai and other recurring images
Martin: I think pictures can tell a story better than words.
Lowell: I've got a lot of words.
Martin: We can always shuffle them around. Anyway, you want to fill in the areas of...?
Lowell: I wanted to ask you about Hokusai's Wave.
Martin: 1974 I think it was and I went back to London - I guess that was after doing Luna Park initially. I think it must have been 74. I didn't have the studio at the Pheasantry any more. I don't know if I had a studio at all, come to think of it. And I got a job in Paris through Sandy Lieberson to do a mural in a friend of his house, which was in Rue .... - I forget which Rue it is was now. Anyway, I was doing a mural, which was Vincent on the Road to Tarascon with Starry Night in the background, and it went down a sort of 3-stepped stair. It was quite a modern house. I repeated the figure three times with the Starry Night in the background and I was very interested in Japanese prints. I had been for some time, but it was like my hobby. I'd go round and see if I could find any anywhere, because they were still rather cheap and I was very interested in Hokusai particularly.
I used to have coffee at a place called Café Fleur which was on the Left Bank - a smart touristy café I guess. But it depends on what time you're in Paris, and it was winter as far as I can remember. I can check it in my diary. I then found this little shop which sold Japanese pictures - Rue de Banque (?) which was a small street behind the Café Fleur. And there's a very nice lady who ran the shop and a big pile of Japanese prints on the floor, all long ones, double the usual height. It's special form, which we can check the name of. I was looking through these, 200 of them. There were some excellent prints there, I recognised some Hokusais which I knew and various other prints, and right at the bottom there was this fantastic picture, the best by far of the pile which was full of excellent material. It was this abalone diver.
The abalone divers are always women. They used to work from boats, dive down, cut the abalone off the rocks and come up again. It's been going on for years and I think it's still a form of fishing. And there's this most graceful arabesque figure. Strangely, the shape of the hair reminded me of the curl of the stars in Starry Night. It was like the first part of the curl, that sort of wave of stars that go through the middle of the picture - a ying / yang meeting in the middle. I thought, 'I don't know who it is, it looks like Utamaro', a very beautiful print. I asked her how much it was. It was 200 francs. I didn't have the money at the time but I was getting paid by the week working on this mural, so I left a deposit. I was very excited about it. I thought it was positively by Utamaro and when I got the money I went back to the shop. It was always shut. I went back for about two weeks and it was always shut. Then I went back one day and eventually it was open and I picked up the print. I was very thrilled with it.
I took it to another more up-market Japanese print shop where I'd also discovered a Hokusai which was in the back of Art Book where the skeleton is pulling down a mosquito net, a fantastic grotesque image.
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| Martin Sharp, Hokusai's The ghost of Kohada Koheij circa 1831 (extract) and Goya, collage, Art Book, London, 1972. |
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| Hokusai, The Ghost of Kohada Koheiji, woodblock print, circa 1830. |
I showed her this print and she said, 'Oh, this is by Hokusai!' She said the signature reads, "the old man mad about drawing" which was the signature which he used after his 85th year I believe. These dates have all got to be checked, but very late in his life.
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| Hokusai signature, The Lost Hokusai (lower right section), screenprint, 1979. |
I couldn't believe this stroke of amazing luck finding a Hokusai - and one that I've never seen before. I finished the mural, did one more in a shop somewhere, went back to London and took it into the Victoria & Albert Museum. It was a strange feeling walking in. It was wrapped up under my arm but people were reacting in a strange way to me as I was walking through the corridors. It was as if they sensed that I had a very rare picture under my arm. And the guy in the Oriental Art section did turn up a reference to it in a book called Decorative Arts Of Japan by an American woman, published in about 1920 I think.
I had an Utamaro print of awabi divers above the surface and this one of Hokusai's below the surface. As I was very short of funds at the time I did show it to someone wanting to get it identified and this art dealer - he had an oriental art gallery - Askanazi perhaps his name was, something like that, said he knew the great English expert on Hokusai. I think it's Joseph Hillier. And he said he'd show it to him and check with him whether it was a Hokusai - this foremost scholar in Britain. Some weeks later I went back to him and he said he checked with this scholar and it wasn't a Hokusai - it might have been a drawing after a painting by Hokusai, a print after a painting by Hokusai. It seemed a strange thing to say, but he offered me a small amount of money for it, which I refused.
Come to think of it, maybe this was 1972 when this was going on, I'll have to check. I lost it in 74-76. These dates I've got to check, sorry about that. So then I brought it back to Australia, had it on the wall there and I knew - if it was a Hokusai - under any circumstance it must have been valuable. It was very beautiful. I kept looking at it, that rock at the bottom of the sea that she's dived down to and taken the abalone from - the arrangement of those shells on there has got to represent a third eye, and two eyes and a mouth, and it looks like a head, this rock-like creature on the bottom of the sea.
I've got all this written down somewhere, it might be better in that way. But just to quickly fill it in - I was gradually working it out and then I thought, "That's Hokusai - the figure is the muse. He's living underwater, which signifies one world, and the diver has come down from another world and taken this part of himself and is representing it above the water to another world."
I was thinking along these lines, and in my curiosity for Japanese shops - there's one in Double Bay - I called in there and a very nice lady was running it. She said she was going to Japan soon and I said, 'I've got this print, I've always wanted to get it identified and I think only the Japanese will really know about it.' By that stage I was certainly broke and looking for 'maybe I would sell it' and it had to have authentication before it could be worth anything. So I arranged for her to take it to Japan to have it checked out.
Before that I'd offered to loan my Japanese prints to the Art Gallery of New South Wales but they wanted me to donate them. They didn't want anything on loan, so they knocked it back. By that time I'd had it framed. I took it to Charles Hewitt who was meant to be the best framer in Sydney at the time. He rang me up and said, 'Look I've got a terrible...I've put a hole through that picture. But don't worry, I've restored it, it's all been done correctly, it's been mounted on rice paper and it will be okay.'
I just swallowed whatever it was, got it back and it did look beautifully mounted, very flat, and I imagine he'd mounted it on rice paper and things like this. This woman apparently knew him as well - I don't know where this came in but she knew him, and I said, "Will you take it to Japan?" She said, she knew some people to take it to.
I sent the Hokusai off to Japan and got a letter from the woman saying, 'Bad news, I've lost it at the airport' ... whatever. I was completely shattered (a) because I'd lost something very valuable, (b) because it was probably one of Hokusai's last and major works as a print and I felt I'd let him down. I had discovered it and I'd lost it. At least it was back in Japan. Then I began to research his life more and then I found at that stage of his life he lived in a fishing hut with his daughter [Oi] who was an abalone diver. And I was writing to Jacquie Menzies - who was going to Japan, who was from the Oriental Print Department of the New South Wales Art Gallery - about the print and what I felt it meant: he was the rock, the diver was the muse - plus his daughter no doubt. And then I realised that the chisel she had in her mouth, which was the chisel which prised the abalone off the rock, was in fact the chisel which had carved the print...
Lowell: Oh really?
Martin: ...and that the print was the abalone (laughs) and the abalone is a symbol of female generative organs, also a symbol of unrequited love, because it's a uni-valve shell not a bi-valve shell (bi-valve is requited love and uni-valve is unrequited love). And then I realised this is like a oriental equivalent of Botticelli's Birth Of Venus - on that level of image. And while writing this, and looking up, and finding out that his daughter was an abalone diver and he was living with her at the time he probably did the print, I realised that I saw the date of his death - I was writing this on the 130th anniversary of his death [10 May 1849] . These are the words solving the puzzle of the meaning of the print, which I'd lost, but I'd discovered it in a strange way by losing it.
Lowell: So you reproduced the image?
Martin: Yes, I was so ashamed having lost it I thought, 'I've got to try and keep it'. Luckily I had some photographs of it taken by William and I could at least to keep it alive, although I wasn't as happy with the print as I should have been. I didn't quite achieve the quality that I wanted to. It was a very good effort by the printmaker, Kristin Coburn, but the colours weren't quite right.
Lowell: When did you do that?
Martin: I forget when I did the print. However, in exchange for the original print - compensation or whatever - I got given this Japanese screen which had a whole lot of lovely images in it, a very old screen made up of different Japanese pictures. So really, on the image level, the image vanished and the screen came in return.
Lowell: How do you mean the screen?
Martin: I've got the screen upstairs. It's a two-winged Japanese decorative screen.
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No information is available to the present writer in regard to the provenance of the work prior to 1974, though there is a reference made to its being cited in a 1920s era book which has yet to be located by the present writer. This was reinforced by the fact that Sharp shipped it to Japan for appraisal around 1976, indicating that there was no provenance information available to him, and he was seeking to redress this. Sharp's belief that it was an 'unknown work' by Hokusai, and perhaps unique, along with the fact that due his strained financial position at the time which may require him to sell the work, would have been reason enough for allowing it to leave his possession in order to be assessed by experts in Japan.
What did that original artwork Sharp discovered in the Paris shop during 1974 actually look like?
We know this from the image posted by Angelica Frances Tremblay on Facebook during November 2024. In addition, and judging by the 1979 screenprint copy and 1990-2006 painting illustrated herein, it was in the form of a traditional Japanese ink scroll. These were of portrait orientation, large in size (c. 14 x 34 inches) and done in ink and colour on silk or paper. Woodblock prints on the other hand were usually ink and colour on paper, of a smaller size and primarily landscape in orientation, though also portrait. The scrolls of the Edo era were primarily unique artworks, unlike prints which were usually produced in large numbers until the printing block wore out. We do not know the precise size of the lost Hokusai, though it is likely close to the Sharp and Coburn screenprint of 1979 (illustrated below) which was copied from the photographs of William Yang. Some of the descriptive comments by Sharp in the Lowell Tarling interviews are also useful.
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3. The Princeton work
In researching the art of Hokusai and other Japanese artists of the Tokugawa / Edo period, the only work discovered which was identical to Sharp's subsequent copies which he named The Lost Hokusai (1979) and Abalone (1990-2006) was an ink scroll from the Gillett Griffin (1928-2016) Collection, Princeton University Library, which was therein titled Hokusai's Ama.
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| Hokusai, [Hokusai's Ama], ink scroll painting or woodblock print, 1834+. Collection: Princeton University Library. |
This work was attributed to Hokusai in the 2007 acquisition notice posted online by one of the collection curators (Mellby 2007). It was illustrated therein and above. In fact, that 2007 digital copy is the only copy of the work discovered on the internet. There were no other copies located, apart from the identical work posted on Facebook on 9 November 2024. This points to the likelihood that it was not a print printed in multiple copies, but a singular work of art.
Is this Princeton University work Martin Sharp's missing Hokusai?
Yes.
No reference to the Princeton work was ever made by Sharp between 2007 and his death six years later. It would appear that nobody in Australia, or his friends overseas, noted the online reference and brought it to his attention. There is no doubt that if Sharp had of been made aware of the Princeton item he would have made efforts to have it returned. Sharp had been informed that the original work was either left on the plane upon arrival in Japan, or lost at the airport there. Judging by his comments in the Tarling interviews, he was obviously skeptical upon being informed of this and rightly suspected that it was simply stolen from him. It likely very quickly found its way to a dealer in that country who sold it on to the US market, where noted collector of Japanese art Gillett Griffin eventually came into possession of it. There is no direct evidence for any of this illegal activity, of course, however it does offer an alternative narrative and help us in describing The Lost Hokusai of Martin Sharp. The Princeton image is the only image on the internet that is identical to the Tremblay photograph. The Sharp print of 1979 and painting of 1990+. Sharp vary in regard to colouring and media, as noted by Sharp.
The original Ama (fisher-woman) abalone diver work acquired by Sharp in Paris during 1974 has been attributed to Katsushika Hokusai, with the signature the old man mad about drawing supporting the attribution. Though Sharp states that he only used this late in life, post 1845, another reference states:
1834 saw Hokusai working under the name "Gakyō Rōjin" (画狂老人; "The Old Man Mad About Drawing" (Orenco Originals 2021)
On many of Hokusai's works such information is provided, usually in the form of cartouche - square or rectangular boxes containing text, located on the upper or lower edges of the work. This is not seen in the Sharp and Lewis Abalone painting, though it is seen in Sharp's 1979 The Lost Hokusai screenprint, and his two Ginger in Japan screenprints of 1977 and 1981 (illustrated below).
Sharp himself noted in one of the Tarling interviews that, at the time of purchase, ....It looks like Utamaro (c.1753-1806), another famous Japanese artist of the Edo period who did a number of works feature abalone divers. However, he deferred enthusiastically to the information provided by the Japanese woman in Paris that it was a Hokusai, following her translation of the signature script. Hokusai did produce a single sheet woodblock print featuring fisher women as abalone divers (illustrated below), but nothing similar to the work under discussion, either in woodblock print or manga form, let alone a traditional Japanese scroll. Hokusai was extremely prolific, with some 30,000 works identified to date. The work under discussion has not been included in any official catalogue of his work to date.
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4. Painting or print?
In the mind of the present writer the original work acquired by Sharp in 1974 was an ink scroll, not a woodblock print. However, Sharp referred to it as a print, and the 2007 Hokusai's Ama notification by Princeton University also calls it such. Is the present writer mistaken? No, and Sharp was not the only person confused. The curator from the Oriental Section of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, that Sharp consulted back in 1974, and who was obviously an expert in the area of both Hokusai and Japanese art of the Edo period, along with the unnamed art dealer and Joseph Hillier, author of the book Hokusai: Paintings, Drawings and Woodcuts (Hillier 1955), came to the conclusion that
....it might be a drawing after a painting by Hokusai or a print after a painting by Hokusai, but it wasn't by Hokusai... (Tarling 2016).
Was it a drawing or a print? Was it by Hokusai or not, and if not, why not? This equivocating statement is strange, to say the least, and frustrating, to say the least, for it also offers a number of avenues for further research. Was it an original drawing, or was it a print, and why the confusion over attribution and format? Woodblock prints were usually single sheet works printed on paper of relatively small size, varying from the commonly known A4 to A3 dimensions of the modern era. In order to achieve larger sizes, they were often combined as triptychs. They were also printed in large numbers. Scrolls, on the other hand, were usually large individual works of art painted on paper or silk and meant to be hung, often with a cloth or painted surround. Sharp notes that the original Hokusai was on two pieces of paper or silk.
Both painting and print utilised ink and colour. Is it possible to confuse the two? It would appear so, as the comment by Hillier, unnamed art dealer and the V&A expert suggests. However, there is a significant difference not only in size, but between the means of production of a woodblock print and a painted ink scroll, giving rise to the rarity of the latter in comparison to the former. Hokusai produced both prints and paintings throughout his working career, right up to the time of his death at the age of 90 in 1849. Therefore it is quite possible that, in 1974 and even 2007, there could have been some confusion as to whether the abalone diver work Sharp acquired (aka Hokusai's Ama) was an original work of art or a print multiple. In actual fact, it was more likely, in the view of the present writer, to have been a painting, a unique coloured ink drawing, as opposed to a print. If it was sold to Sharp as a print, he may not have questioned that, despite the fact that he had gained extensive experience in the production of screenprints and other forms of printing since the early 1960s, both in association with his work on OZ magazine and Big O Posters of London.
In looking at the Princeton University work, we can note the general grey tone and total coverage of paint, with highlights of pale brown clothing and the underwater seaweed and rocks in black, white and grey. Whether these were true colours, or aberrations due to the age of the work (as in fading) or the light used during photography, is not known. Also note the four horizontal folding lines which have caused damage to the work, suggesting it had been folded rather than rolled. Once again, it would be more common to fold a large print rather than roll a large scroll. This work looks like a painting, rather than a print, which often has exposed areas of paper within the image. A discussion around some of Hokusai's scroll artworks is seen in the following video, revealing the simple fact that he produced a number of such works, and that the Abalone Diver could easily have been one of these.
Hokusai: Mad about painting, Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art, 14 March 2021, YouTube, duration: 7.52 minutes.
In hindsight, the statement by Hillier, the unnamed art dealer and the V&A curator may be correct. Sharp's work may have been a copy of a work by Hokusai, perhaps by one of his many students. Any more specific statement must await the availability of additional information, such as location of the reference to the work within the 1920s era book Decorative Arts of Japan, cited by the aforementioned V&A expert but not as yet located.
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5. Sharp / Coburn print 1979
One aspect of the story largely absent from the above discussion was the fact that after the original artwork went missing, during 1979 Sharp instigated the production of a reproduction in the form of a screen print. This was in an edition of 80 and titled The Lost Hokusai.
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| Martin Sharp & Kristin Coburn, The Lost Hokusai, screenprint, 1979. |
The loss of what could indeed be the Hokusai Ama scroll / print, weighed heavily on the mind of Sharp. As Tarling notes in the artist's biography:
[During 1979] Martin revisited the guilt he felt over loosing the Abalone Diver print. He was convinced it was a 'lost' Hokusai print of his daughter diving for abalone. Martin worried about it, wrote about it, and went over and over it in his mind. He [had] checked with foremost Hokusai scholar Joseph Hillier who concluded it was not bona fide. He didn't convince Martin.
A woman who ran a Japanese shop in Double Bay told Martin that she knew some experts on Japanese master painters and Martin let her take it to Japan. He said, 'I got a letter from the woman saying, "Bad news, I've lost it at the airport." I was completely shattered because (a) I'd lost something very valuable and (b) because it was probably one of Hokusai's last and major works as a print. I felt I'd let him down - I had discovered it and I'd lost it.'
Uneasy about the loss, Martin wanted to preserve the image, it was the least he could do. Martin and print maker Kristin Coburn recreated a print from a photograph taken by William [Yang]. Martin and Kristin reproduced it faithfully, without commentary. 'I was so ashamed for having lost it,' said Martin. 'This way, I could at least keep it alive.' (Tarling 2016 & 2017)
According to the 2010 Josef Lebovic Gallery Australian and International Posters catalogue, wherein a copy of the screenprint was offered for sale, the background to the is presented as follows:
During the 1970s Martin Sharp gave the original Hokusai print of this image to a friend to take to Japan for appraisal. Unfortunately the print was lost in transit. A distraught Sharp approached Kristin Coburn (daughter of artist John Coburn) to create a screenprint of the lost image from a slide in Sharp's possession. Coburn meticulously hand-cut each screen for each colour to achieve a high quality result. (Lebovic 2010)
The variations between the colouring of the original ink scroll from the Princeton University collection and the Martin Sharp 1979 print and 1990-2006 painting are significant. Within Lebovic's aforementioned 2010 catalogue, the screenprint was offered for sale for Aus$1,350, and described as follows:
#71 Martin Sharp, The Lost Hokusai, 1979, colour screenprint, printer's blind stamp lower left in image, editioned 18/80, titled, signed and dated in pencil by Sharp in lower margin, annotated in pencil by printer Kristin Coburn verso, 29.6 x 79.6 cm.
This copy was subsequently purchased by the State Library of New South Wales, where it was similarly described, though in more detail:
The Lost Hokusai, 1979. 1 print: screen print, coloured; image 79.4 x 29.6 cm, on sheet 84.0 x 32.7 cm. Editioned 18/80. Signed and dated ‘SHARP. 79’ in pencil in lower margin at right. Titled in pencil in lower margin at centre. Inscribed in pencil on reverse ‘Printed by Kristin Coburn’. Blind stamp 'KB' (reversed) in image at lower left.
Note the more colourful palette of the screenprint over the original Princeton scroll, with a pale yellow-brown background, dark orange clothing, and multicoloured seaweed and rocks varying from teal through to grey and black. The black ink drawing line in both is similar. This screen printed version is very colourful, though accurate in its representation of the detail of the original work as seen in Hokusai's Ama.
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6. Sharp / Lewis painting 1990+
Around 1990 Martin Sharp was moved to replicate the lost Hokusai as a large painting, and decided to do so in close collaboration with fellow artist Tim Lewis. Part of the work's journey from ideation during that year to exhibition in 2006 as Abalone (illustrated above) is contained within the Tarling biographies. The following are some relevant quotes.
Abalone Diver (The Lost Hokusai) was Martin and Tim's next picture. The possibility of Art Exhibition 2 was on the cards. Martin explained his tight artistic relationship with Tim. 'I'm the producer - if you like - Tim's the performer. I found the image, I've got the canvas, I've got the prints, I've got the studio, I've got the place to allow the picture to grow in - and a wonderful painter who's patient and humble enough to work on another person's image - which is a great thing I have with Tim after Art Exhibition. We'll both sigh it.' (Tarling 2017)
So said Martin Sharp to Lowell Tarling on 16 January 1991 during one of their many interviews, only this time outlining the origin during 1990 of a large canvas which would replicate the lost Hokusai, following on the work with Kristin Coburn during 1979 in replicating it as a screenprint. Tarling went on to write:
While watching Tim breathe life in the Lost Hokusai canvas, once again Martin contemplated the meaning of the picture. 'The arrangement of those shells represents a third eye - this rock-like creature on the bottom of the sea. I was gradually working it out and then I thought, "That's Hokusai! The figure is the muse. He's living underwater," which signifies one world. The diver has come down from another world, taken this part of himself and is representing it above the water. The abalone is a symbol of female generative organs, also a symbol of unrequited love, because it's a univalve shell not a bi-valve shell (bi-valve shell is requited love and uni-valve is unrequited love). And then I realise this is an oriental equivalent of Botticelli's Birth of Venus!' (Tarling 2017)
Talk of love and muses gave rise to the following comments on the evolving painting by some of Sharp's acquaintances:
Occasional visitor, Ian Reid (owner of the Yellow House premises in the 1970s) summed up his thoughts. 'I think Martin's muse was nubile young women, best stated in that beautiful painting he did of the young woman in the Hokusai pool. Abalone Diver, I thought, moved towards his essence.....
.....Martin was in the studio by night and Australian Galleries by day. He was at the gallery when former abalone diver Allan Broadhurst walked in. On seeing the Lost Hokusai picture, Allan blurted, 'Shit! That's an abalone diver!' Martin overheard, invited him back to Wirian and gave him a print - signed, 'to Allan - the fisherman.' Allan told Martin, 'Women were known to be the best divers in many countries, not just Japan. So that's absolutely true to form. It was early days of harvest because this is not very deep. She's bringing the catch up for the person in the boat. She hasn't got a bag so she just one-at-a-time. It's a wonderful way of presenting it.' (Tarling 2017)
Tarling also notes that Sharp, apart from exhibiting the work, at one point used it as collateral to the value of $3,000 to finance a film about Tiny Tim. Whether it left Wirian at the time is not known.
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7. Sharp and Hokusai
Martin Sharp was a fan of Hokusai and Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints of the Edo era, as also was one of his most significant influences - Vincent Van Gogh (Rüger and Vellekoop 2018). Sharp produced a number of variants of Hokusai's Great Wave, in print, as a cloth shirt for Mambo, and within the Yellow House Stone Room, the latter in collaboration with Brett Whiteley.
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| Martin Sharp & Brett Whiteley, Stone Room, Yellow House, 1970. |
Other Ukiyo-e related works by Sharp include his two Ginger in Japan woodblock print copies. It is unclear whether they are based on works by Hokusai or other well-known artists of the Edo era, most likely Hiroshige. Both works feature Mount Fuji in the distant background.
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| Ginger in Japan, screenprint, 1977. |
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| Ginger in Japan, screenprint, 35/50, 1981. |
Sharp's variants on The Great Wave occur between the early 1970s through to the 1980s, with the most famous featuring Boofhead.
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| The Wave, 1986. |
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8. Abalone divers in art
Hokusai is known to have produced one woodblock print featuring female abalone divers for the series One Hundred Poems told by the Wet Nurse.
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| Hokusai, [Female abalone divers], woodblock print, c.1835-6, 26 x 37 cm. |
Description: Hokusai depicts a scene of women divers (Ama) fishing for abalone (awabi). On the steep rock, three Ama rest while several cheerful women dive in the ocean, their feet and arms emerging from the rolling waves. Although men also could be divers, traditionally it was women who dived, aided by men who waited for them in boats to gather their catch. In traditional style, the divers are naked to the waist.
Other famous Japanese artists to include the subject of female abalone divers included Ando Hiroshige, Utagawa Kuninao and Kitagawa Utamaro. In the following two examples, note the presence of a straw in the mouth to assist with breathing.
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| Utagawa Kuninao, Abalone diver, c.1820. |
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| Kitagawa Utamaro. [Abalone divers], woodblock prints. |
During research by the present writer, no copy of the supposed Hokusai Abalone Diver scroll was found, apart from the single specimen illustrated above. All those seen were single sheet woodblock prints.
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9. Genuine or fake?
A recent Facebook posting has raised the issue of whether some copies of The Lost Hokusai 1979 screenprint offered for sale on platforms such as eBay, or otherwise identified, are genuine or fake. Obviously some are genuine, with direct provenance from the artist and part of the original print run of 80. For example, the copy of The Lost Hokusai given to chef Kylie Kwong is undoubtedly genuine. Below is an account of the provenance of that unique copy of the print, which can be seen in the following illustration.
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| Kylie Kwong & Nell with works given to them by Martin Sharp. |
Kylie Kwong became friends with Martin Sharp through her restaurant Billy Kwong, then in Surry Hills, now in Potts Point. He loved her food; she loved his art. And his company. "Cheeky, divine, gorgeous – those blue eyes!" she says, grinning. The pair would host parties at his house, with Kylie on food duty, and Sharp thanking the chef with paintings – a poster for the singer Tiny Tim, a version of his bright teal-and-red Courage, My Friend and, after she'd spent some time admiring it, his Lost Hokusai, a screenprint of an original Hokusai image showing a woman diving for abalone. "He used to write my name the Chinese way, and he signed that painting 'Dear Ky-lee, thanks for the beautiful dishes, Ma-tin'," Kwong recalls. "Then he drew some glasses on her… so she looked like me." (Meares 2015)
The aforementioned Facebook posting by Tremblay during November 2024 questioned the authenticity of a copy recently sold on eBay and illustrated below.
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| eBay copy, #39/80, 2 October 2024. |
This print sold on 2 October 2024 for Aus$350. The image presented online was annotated in pencil lower left 39/80, along with The Lost Hokusai in lower middle and Sharp 79 lower right. This was standard for the edition. It was also listed as produced in 1982, though no reference was given to the allocation of that data, as opposed to 1979. A visual scan of the image provided suggested that the item on offer was from the original run of 80 screenprints. This could be verified through a scan of the back for the printer's signature, and identification of the printer's blind stamp on the front.
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10. Stolen, not lost?
It appears from the above narrative that Martin Sharp had the Hokusai which he discovered in Paris during 1974 stolen from him around 1975. The relationship between the framer Charles Hewitt who put a hole in the work (accidentally) and the Japanese lady from the Double Bay shop who took it to Japan for Sharp and lost it en route (accidentally) is suspicious. On the other hand it may have innocently been misplaced at the airport or on the plane and eventually identified for what it was by a person in Tokyo who then sold it on. Sharp rightly cherished the work, as obviously did others who encountered it. It is the present writer's belief at this stage that the work titled Hokusai's Ama in the Princeton University Library collection is Martin Sharp's lost Hokusai. An interesting provenance trail.....
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11. References
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Notes from the River Caves - Selected Works, [exhibition], 2010, Art Gallery of New South Wales.
Dayman, Lucy, Katsushika Oi: The hidden hand of Hokusai's daughter, Japan Objects [blog], 15 February 2019.
Forrer, Matthi, Hokusai: Prints and Drawings, Prestel, 2010, 216p.
-----, Hiroshige, 2011, 256p.
Govier, Katherine, The Printmaker's Daughter, Harper Perennial, 2014, 512p.
Harris, Frederick, Ukiyo-e: The art of the Japanese print, Tuttle, 2010, 192p.
Hillier, Joseph, Hokusai: Paintings, Drawings and Woodcuts, Phaidon Press, London, 1955, 134p.
-----, Hokusai: Drawings, Phaidon Press, London, 1966.
Hunter, Jack, Dream Spectres: Extreme Ukiyo-e - Sex. Blood and the Supernatural, Shinbaku Books, 2010, 128p.
Lebovic, Josef, Australian and International Posters, Josef Lebovic Gallery, Sydney, collectors list no.143, 2010.
Marks, Andreas, Japanese woodblock prints: artists, publishers and masterworks 1680-1900, Tuttle, 2010, 336p.
Martin Sharp limited edition print - The Lost Hokusai 79 - signed by the artist, eBay, 2 October 2024.
Meares, Joel, Kylie Kwong and Nell: Swapping your way to a great art collection, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 March 2015.
Mellby, Julie L., Hokusai's Ama, Graphic Arts: Exhibitions, acquisitions, and other highlights from the Graphic Arts Collection [blog], Princeton University Library, 23 December 2007.
Orenco Originals, Katsushika Hokusai: "The Old Man Mad With Painting", Orenco Originals, 11 March 2021.
Piggott, Sir Francis T., The Decorative Art of Japan, B.T. Batsford, London, 1910, 130p.
Rüger, Axel and Marije Vellekoop, Japanese Prints: The Collection of Vincent van Gogh, Thames & Hudson, London, 2018, 224p.
Tarling, Lowell, Sharp 1942-1979 - A biography of Martin Sharp as told to Lowell Tarling, ETT Print, Exile Bay, 2016, 296p.
-----, Sharper 1980-2013 - A biography of Martin Sharp as told to Lowell Tarling, ETT Print, Exile Bay, 2017, 226p.
Utamaro's pictures of abalone divers, Wikipedia, accessed 14 November 2024.
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12. Acknowledgements
In the compilation of this article, I would like to acknowledge Angelica Frances Tremblay for setting me off on the path of discovery regarding The Lost Hokusai, and to Lowell Tarling for his in-depth interviews with Martin Sharp over many years, which included some lengthy discussions regarding Hokusai and the works mentioned above.
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Last updated: 14 November 2024
Michael Organ, Australia
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