HOKUSAI (1760–1849) SET OF THREE ICHIJI SHITA-E Circa 1830. Red and black ink on double-layered paper. Depicting, respectively, warriors, various figures, and an animal’s head emerging from the waves. DIM. (sheets) 19.7 × 15.7 cm (7 3/4 × 6 3/16 in.) - 15.9 × 23.1 cm (6 1/4 × 9 1/16 in.) - 14.9 × 10.4 cm (5 7/8 × 4 1/16 in.) Bearing several small, identical collector’s seals, ‘Akinai’, which appear on numerous sketches, notably on drawings from the Berès sales at Sotheby’s in 2003, where they were listed as unidentified. But also in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Hokusai and his School’, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, 1982, nos. 16 and 17, pp. 30–31, as well as in the catalogue of the exhibition ‘Japanese Watercolours and Drawings of the 18th and 19th Centuries’, Musée d’Ixelles, 1981, nos. 96 and 108. The entry for no. 108 states: “Bearing seals that have never been deciphered, perhaps those of a very early collector of Hokusai’s drawings. These seals are recognised as authenticating, without any possibility of error, drawings by the master’s own hand.”