Albright Self Portrait

​Ivan Albright's unconventional self-portrait shows the formally attired artist relaxing, cigarette in hand, as he sits behind a table bearing a variety of delicate decorative objects, including a large crystal ashtray. One hand to his cheek, he fixes the viewer with a penetrating gaze. Albright was only in his mid-30s when he made this likeness: he exaggerated the wrinkles and furrows of his face and hands and tinged his hair silver as if to anticipate the ravages of time. The portrait emphasizes both the life experience that gives depth and distinction to each individual and our shared fate of inevitable bodily decay.

Albright's earliest finished oil self-portrait, this work is one of many in which the artist unsparingly explored his own persona and charted the visible progression of age. It was created for the easel painting division of the Illinois Art Project, a Depression-era federal relief program that sponsored art for schools, libraries, and other public buildings. Participating artists commonly depicted typical Americans and everyday life, but Albright chose this highly personal subject, which he rendered with unsettling effect.

Ivan Albright and his twin brother, sculptor Malvin Albright, were the sons of successful Chicago painter Adam Emory Albright. They grew up modeling for their father and eventually shared a studio with him. Before beginning his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, Ivan worked as a medical illustrator in France during World War I, an experience that gave him a clinical knowledge of the human body and its vulnerabilities. By the mid-1920s he had found his distinct artistic voice in obsessively detailed and uncompromisingly realistic portraits, character studies, and still lifes that gave modern expression to time-honored philosophical concerns with the passage of time, the decay of worldly things, and the vanity of human ambition.