Woman Wrapped in a Dark Shawl, Kneeling in Warm Light — Print & Oil Painting

The entire picture is drawn from one narrow band of warm brown. Wall, ground, hair and shawl all come out of the same family of umber, russet and dull gold, and the painter has allowed himself exactly two departures from it: a cold grey slab standing at the left edge, and a bar of raw white running along the bottom.

The shawl is worked as texture rather than as pattern. Dark red brown, open at the front, it is built from dozens of small dragged and stippled touches with the ground showing between them, so it reads as lace or crochet without a single motif ever being described. Both forearms are crossed low over it, holding it closed.

Light rakes in from the upper right and is permitted to touch four things only: the brow, the ridge of the nose, one shoulder and the upper edge of the crossed arms. Everything it misses drops straight into the background. The head is bowed, the eyes are lowered and the expression is completely inward.

That grey slab at the left is the strangest decision in the work. It is a flat cool rectangle with a scraped vertical edge, attached to nothing and standing for no object, and its whole function is to stop the warm ground from closing in on the figure. Remove it and the picture suffocates.

The measured brightness is low and the contrast is moderate, which is what a canvas built almost entirely out of shadow with one lit passage will always report. From our Vietnam collection, near a woman in a red dress leaning against a wall with her eyes closed.