A large-format ink portrait of a woman — the face in three-quarter view, the head slightly tilted forward, the eyes closed or heavily downcast beneath emphatic brows and darkened upper lids. The hair loops and swirls at the crown in a thick upswept mass, described with the bold broad-nib or brush strokes characteristic of the large-format ink portraits in this series. The neck below is thick and described with shadow marks at the throat, and the shoulders below are broadly indicated. The overall impression is deeply inward: the eyes closed, the head slightly bowed, the expression completely removed from the viewer's world.
The ink is applied with the same bold variable-width approach as Works 1472 and 1477 — the outer contour of the face and hair as a single heavy line, the interior shadow marks built in hatching strokes at the eye sockets, the jaw, the throat. The closed or heavily downcast eyes are the portrait's defining feature: where Work 1472 confronted the viewer directly and Work 1477's subject was caught mid-expression, here the eyes are entirely unavailable, the face turned inward. The closed-eye portrait belongs to a tradition of images of sleep, prayer, and absorption — states in which the subject is present but unreachable.
The large ochre paper ground — shared with Works 1477 and 1485 — gives the ink its warmth, and the bold brushwork gives the portrait its authority. But the closed eyes introduce a quality of absence into the boldness: a face drawn with great visual force, fully present as form and mark, but removed from encounter. This is the most emotionally complex of the three large-format ink/charcoal portraits in the batch, the boldness and the withdrawal in tension with each other.