Fiction. These paintings were never painted. Images are AI-generated, stories and auctions are invented.

The Wave, the Morning After

From the Whatifs Catalogue, the encyclopedia of paintings that never were

This article is fiction. Katsushika Hokusai never painted this work. The image was generated by AI and the story below, including its discovery and sale, is invented.

The Wave, the Morning After is an imagined painting attributed, within the Whatifs fiction, to Katsushika Hokusai (c. 1832). It belongs to the Whatifs series of works the great masters never painted.

History and rediscovery

Scholars long suspected Hokusai had cut a sequel to his Great Wave: a letter from his publisher mentions "the sea in the morning, when it apologises". In 2024 a single impression turned up pasted to the back of a folding screen sold from a house in Nagano. Same Mount Fuji, same Prussian blue, but a glassy sea where the three boats row home with full nets. Sold for $19 million in 2025, a record for a print.

Sale

Within the fiction, the painting sold for $19,000,000 (2025). Tap the board to replay the imagined bidding. The auction pictured below never took place.

Imagined saleroom (AI-generated photo)
AI-generated photograph of a fictional auction.

See also

Notes

  1. Image generated with AI from a prompt written by Whatifs. No real painting, signature or auction house is reproduced.
  2. Story written for Whatifs. Any resemblance to real discoveries is coincidental.

Hang the painting that never was

A 50 × 60 cm museum-grade print of “The Wave, the Morning After”, labelled as a Whatifs creation on the back. 29 €, shipped in Europe.

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