The Great Wave Off Kanagawa - Copies of The Woodblock

Copies of The Woodblock

There are various copies of this work throughout the world. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the British Museum in London, the collection of Claude Monet in Giverny, France, the Sackler Gallery, the Guimet Museum and the National Library of France are some of the places where this work is on exposition. A collection of woodblock Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji prints, contained in the wellness spa of the Costa Concordia was lost during the collision of the ship on January 13, 2012.

Some private collections also have a copy, as is the case of the Gale collection in the USA.

It was private collectors during the 20th century that launched the woodblock print collections in these museums. For example, the copy that is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York comes from the antique collection of Henry Osborne Havemeyer, and was donated by Mrs. Havemeyer in 1929. In the same way, the copy in the National Library of France was acquired in 1888 from the collection of Samuel Bing. As for the copy in the Guimet Museum, it comes from the legacy of Raymond Koechlin, and has been in the museum since 1932.

Even today it is possible to buy an original copy of the work. One copy from the Huguette Beres collection was auctioned on March 7, 2003, the bidding reached 23,000 euros. The 46 prints from the series Thirty Six Views of Mount Fuji were auctioned at Sothebys in 2002 for a total of 1,350,000 euros.