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Hi - I brought this 'original' from an auction. Does anyone have any ideas how I can verify provenance? I'm pretty sure it's not what it says it is, but worth checking.
Thanks.

This appears to be an ehon (book) page. There is no reason it can't be an original. Such pages aren't worth a lot. We have a number of such pages that are supposed to be Hokusai ehon pages. See the examples below. Some are double pages that I've virtually paired to create a bigger image.

Cheers,
Stan

Trying to verify it's originality is not that easy. You have to know which book contained the page and then verify that the book it came from was an original. There may have been reprintings. Alternatively, if you have a known original of that page, you can compare the two to verify that they are exact duplicates.

Cheers,
Stan

I agree with Stan- Your print looks like a page extracted from a book. It looks like the mounting includes a mat board with a window cut out of it, exposing the artwork. The matting could be obscuring some text, in the margins, outside of the artwork (see Stan's snapshots for several examples). This text may be helpful in identifying the source of the print. I suggest that you remove the print from its current mounting for 2 reasons:
1. To examine any markings on the sheet.
2. To re-mount it using modern archival materials.

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