View of Enoshima (First Work on the First Day of the Year of the Goat, 1799)

View of Enoshima, identified by its inscription as the first work that Katsushika Hokusai completed on the first day of the Year of the Goat, 1799, is a celebratory New Year print depicting the sacred island of Enoshima in Sagami Bay. The composition shows the island connected to the mainland by a low sandbar at low tide, with travelers crossing toward its shrines and the gentle curve of the bay extending into the distance. The Harvard Art Museums impression preserves the soft blue gradients and the precise figural drawing characteristic of high-quality early Hokusai designs. As an Edo ukiyo-e print produced for the New Year, the work occupied a particular cultural niche, marking the artist's renewed productivity at the start of the year and serving as an auspicious greeting for patrons. Enoshima had long been associated with Benzaiten, the Buddhist goddess of music, eloquence, and good fortune, making the island a particularly fitting subject for a New Year design intended to invoke prosperity. Katsushika Hokusai's choice to inscribe the print as his first work of the year underscores his attention to ritualistic markers of artistic practice, a concern that would deepen as he matured. The composition's careful spatial recession, with travelers diminishing toward the distant temple precincts, demonstrates the artist's growing command of perspective that would later flower in the Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji. For collectors and scholars, this ukiyo-e print is valuable both as a dated milestone in Hokusai's career and as an example of how Edo woodblock artists used the New Year tradition to combine personal devotion with public publication.