An ink portrait bust — the face in slight three-quarter turning right, the head bowed so the eyes are closed or downcast, the hair falling long and loose from the crown along both sides of the face. The right arm is raised, the hand resting on the crown of the head or lightly gathering the hair — the elbow visible at the upper left of the composition, the forearm descending to the hand at the crown. The ink is applied with the flowing, confident brush line that characterizes the best works in the large-format ink portrait series: the outer contour of the face, the hair's fall, the arm's arch all drawn with the minimum required marks.
The bowed head and raised arm create a composition of particular formal elegance: the arm's arc from elbow to hand mirrors the head's curve from crown to chin, the two curves enclosing a zone of protected space above and around the face. The gesture — hand resting on the crown, face bowed — reads as tender self-tending or contemplation, the body arranged in a way that protects the face while the arm creates a canopy above it.
The closed or downcast eyes appear throughout the new portrait series as an indicator of inward absorption (1445, 1469, 1486, 1496), but here in combination with the raised arm and the long loose hair, the closed eyes contribute to a portrait of unusual lyrical quality. The hair falling in two long sections on either side of the bowed face frames the face like curtains partially drawn; the arm above completes the enclosure. It is the most formally composed and the most poetically resonant of the ink portrait series on ochre paper — a face in private communion with itself, the body's gesture making a private space within the composition.
This portrait, along with Work 1486 [The Ink Portrait, Eyes Closed], represents the lyrical pole of the large-format ink portrait series — the face withdrawn, the gesture enclosing, the medium's boldness in service of something soft rather than assertive. Together they balance the confrontational directness of Works 1472 and 1477, the series spanning from fully present to fully interior.