Montmartre at Night

This print records Sekino's encounter with Paris during international travel, depicting the Montmartre district — the hilltop neighborhood in the 18th arrondissement associated with the Sacré-Cœur basilica, cabarets, and the artistic community of the early twentieth century. Nocturnal urban subjects allowed Sekino to explore deep tonal contrasts: dark sky and shadow against the warm glow of café windows, gas lamps, or the lit facades of buildings climbing the butte. Working as a sosaku-hanga artist abroad, Sekino would have made sketches on site and composed the final print back in the studio, translating the visual experience of a foreign city into the formal language of Japanese woodblock printing. The subject continues a Japanese tradition of Western urban imagery while reflecting the postwar internationalism that characterized Japanese printmaking in the 1950s and 1960s.