My Wife

One of multiple portrait prints Sekino made of his wife, this work belongs to the sustained body of domestic portraiture that runs throughout his career. As with his portraits of his daughter, these images of his wife prioritize individual character and psychological presence over idealized representation. The composition likely focuses closely on the face and upper figure, rendered with the directness and observational specificity that distinguishes Sekino's portrait work from the bijin-ga tradition. A second version of the subject suggests that Sekino returned to it at a different time or from a different formal angle, exploring the same person through variations in pose, lighting treatment, or compositional organization. Working alone through every stage of production on washi paper, Sekino brought to these private subjects the same technical rigor and formal invention he applied to his more publicly oriented landscapes and theater prints.