Sekino Jun'ichirō (関野凖一郎)

Condition Report

Impression & Colours

Excellent. A strong impression with fresh, unfaded colour: the red of the kimono, the cool blue of the window panes and the cups, and the dense black of the iron kettle and the hearth hook. The metallic pigment in the lower wall panels and the hearth frame still catches the light. The characteristic grain of hand-rubbed baren printing is visible throughout.

Paper

Excellent. The sheet is clean and intact, with no tears, losses or significant toning.

⚠ Please examine all photographs carefully. They form part of the condition description.

At the Hearthside — An Aomori Artist Draws His North

A young woman in a red kimono kneels on a cushion, serving tea. She holds a porcelain pot beside three cups set out on a red lacquer tray. Her kimono, worked in large floral and shibori patterning, is the one warm, bright note in a room built from wood, iron and paper. Behind her the shōji run across the sheet, with a cold blue sky in the window panes above.

The right half of the composition belongs to the irori, the sunken open hearth at the centre of the northern farmhouse. An iron kettle hangs over the ash from a jizai-kagi, the adjustable pot-hook, and the crossbar that locks it in place is carved as a fish. The fish, a creature of water, was traditionally hung above the fire as a charm against it. Sekino was born in Aomori, at the northern tip of Tōhoku. In the first summer after the war he gave the series a scene from his own region rather than from the capital.

Nihon Jozoku Sen — A Portfolio of the Occupation Years

Nihon Jozoku Sen (Women's Customs in Japan) was issued in August 1946 by Fugaku Shuppansha. It contained ten prints by five leading sōsaku hanga artists, presented with English titles and a descriptive folder. The contributors were Onchi Kōshirō (two prints), Maekawa Senpan (three), Saitō Kiyoshi (two), Kawanishi Hide (one) and Sekino Jun'ichirō (two). Sekino's second sheet is Rinpatsu (輪髪, Round Hairstyle).

The portfolio belongs to the brief, productive moment when Japanese creative printmakers found their first postwar audience among the Allied occupation. The series is documented in Lawrence Smith's Japanese Prints During the Allied Occupation (2002).

Sekino Jun'ichirō and Sōsaku Hanga

Sōsaku hanga, the Japanese creative-print movement, remains one of the most undervalued areas of twentieth-century art. Traditional prints were produced by a divided workshop of publisher, carver and printer. The movement's founding principle, carried forward above all by Onchi Kōshirō and his circle, was that the artist's own hand should make the block. The portfolio itself presents these sheets as self-carved works.

Sekino (1914–1988) learned woodcut, etching and lithography as a schoolboy in Aomori. In 1939 he moved to Tokyo to study under Onchi, and he became a core member of Onchi's study group, the Ichimokukai. He went on to become one of the most versatile Japanese printmakers of the century. He is best known for his portraits and for his later Tōkaidō series, made after travels abroad sent him back to look at Japanese landscape anew.

Collector's Note

An impression of this design is held in the British Museum. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston holds the complete Nihon Jozoku Sen portfolio. This is an early Sekino from his first postwar year, a figure subject from his native north, in excellent condition.

Shipping: Shipped flat between acid-free tissue and rigid boards, via tracked and insured post. Ships from Germany.

Guarantee: Original Japanese woodblock print, 1946. Guaranteed authentic. Full refund if not as described.

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