Hokusai 'Great Wave' sells $28 million
- Sotheby’s Hong Kong sold a rare impression of Hokusai’s “Under the Wave off Kanagawa” for HK$21.7 million, or about US$2.8 million, in November 2025. - The print nearly tripled its high estimate and set a new auction record for Hokusai’s “Great Wave,” one of art’s most reproduced images. - Art Basel Hong Kong and Samsung also pushed a 25-work digital collection onto TVs, widening access as top-end demand holds. (scmp.com)
A rare impression of Hokusai’s “Under the Wave off Kanagawa,” better known as “The Great Wave,” sold for HK$21.7 million, about US$2.8 million, at Sotheby’s Hong Kong in November 2025. (scmp.com) (mymodernmet.com) The sale set a new auction record for the print and came in at nearly three times its high estimate, according to Sotheby’s coverage and follow-on reports. (mymodernmet.com) (radii.co) The work is not a painting but a woodblock print from Hokusai’s “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji,” a series first published in the early 1830s. Early impressions with strong color and crisp lines are much rarer than the image’s mass familiarity suggests. (scmp.com) (artmag.org) That distinction helps explain the price. “The Great Wave” is one of the most reproduced images in art history, but top-condition early prints are scarce objects, and scarcity is what bidders paid for in Hong Kong. (scmp.com) (artmag.org) The sale has been cited as a sign that the highest end of Hong Kong’s art market is still attracting buyers even as broader auction totals have cooled. South China Morning Post framed the result as evidence of resilience for blue-chip works. (scmp.com) A separate Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 push points in the same direction, but through screens instead of salerooms. Samsung said in March it launched an Art Basel Hong Kong 2026 collection on its Art Store for its television lineup. (news.samsung.com) (sammobile.com) That digital collection includes 25 works by 20 artists from eight galleries, not 20 works as some secondary summaries suggested. Samsung said the pieces stream in 4K on devices including The Frame Pro, OLED models and Micro RGB displays. (news.samsung.com) (asiae.co.kr) Samsung also said it would present a separate curated selection of 20 works from the Lee Kun-Hee Collection during Art Basel Hong Kong 2026. That appears to be the source of the “20 works” figure attached to some reports. (news.samsung.com) (hawkdive.com) Put together, the Hong Kong story is less about one headline-grabbing image than about two different markets moving at once: rare originals at auction and curated digital viewing at home. Hokusai’s wave fetched a record price because an object almost everyone knows turned out to be much rarer than it looks. (scmp.com) (news.samsung.com)
