Hokusai created Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji when he was in his seventies. His experiments with diverse styles mixed Eastern tradition and Western techniques. To achieve this mix, Hokusai simplified the formal elements of composition, colour and line.

Thunderstorm Beneath the Summit is a pure landscape, similar to Red Fuji in composition. In this work Hokusai has darkened the foreground around a dramatic lightning bolt. The artist’s Thirty-six Views of Mt Fuji feature many different images of the mountain, in a variety of seasonal conditions. Through these images, Hokusai expresses the power of nature, and, in doing so, questions the relationship of man to the natural world.