Ars Longa

I was just glancing in Paul Johnson's Art: A New History, a book I heartily recommend, when I ran across this quote from the long-lived Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849 thereby spanning the lives of both Mozart and Chopin), perhaps the greatest Japanese artist:

Since the age of six I have had the habit of drawing the forms of objects. From about fifty I have published my drawings, but none was of much value until I was seventy. At the age of seventy-three, I began to get a slight grasp of the forms of birds, animals, insects and fish, and how grass and trees grow. When I am eighty my art may improve, by ninety it may be really worthwhile, and at a hundred divine. At a hundred and ten every dot and stroke will live.

Here is a landscape of Hokusai:

Click to enlarge

 Sadly, he only lived to be eighty-nine!