The Ragged One was executed as Rico Lebrun was establishing his reputation as a West Coast figurative painter and shortly before he accepted a position as artist-in-residence at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California. This was a critical time in the artist’s life as he became increasingly affected by the human suffering and destruction wrought by World War II. For the remainder of his career, Lebrun concentrated on difficult, challenging themes, such as the crucifixion of Christ, the Holocaust, and Dante’s Inferno.
Masterfully interrelating flesh and cloth, this painting of a hooded, partially dressed woman is representative of Lebrun’s work of the early 1940s, when he painted various figures living on the fringes of society. It adheres closely to Lebrun’s 1941 preparatory sketch, with the distinctive gestural and material qualities of the ink and chalk drawing translated into the lively brushwork and facture of the oil painting.
James Thrall Soby noted the linear precision of Lebrun’s drawing style from this period and praised his “neo-baroque eloquence.” The concise draftsmanship and monumental quality of the image reflect the influence of the early 1920s classical, sculptural style of Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881 - 1973). The subject’s tattered appearance also invites comparison with the etchings of female beggars by Jacques Callot (French, 1592 - 1635) from his series Les Gueux (c. 1622/1623).
Despite the woman’s elusive psychological state and physical vulnerability, she retains her human dignity. One of Lebrun’s biographers drew attention to this redemptive aspect of his work: “By presenting us with the majestic ruins of man’s form, an essential and convincing humanism drives home to us his conviction that whatever physical, psychological and mortal tortures are inflicted on the human form, its innate dignity and the unfulfilled promise of the human spirit cannot be annihilated.” Lebrun’s early patron Donald Bear observed that the artist’s representations of social outcasts were a “vehicle of criticism, deeply rooted in the knowledge that even in degradation of mental and physical despair there is still an intense significance in all fragments of life and feeling.”
Robert Torchia
July 24, 2024
