Essay on Painting Analysis

Submitted By YasmeenB10
Words: 641
Pages: 3

Yasmeen Butler 2:00 – 3:20
Humanities 201K

Into the World There Came a Soul Called Ida was painted by American painter Ivan Albright. This piece is structured as a portrait of oil on canvas during the1920s; 1929 to be exact. The central figure is a woman named Ida whose distinguishing features show her sitting in wicker chair inside a powder room holding a hand mirror powdering her face and neck countless times.
Albright details this portrait of Ida, bedraggled her facial expressions with her oval shaped head, framed with gray, wavy short length hair split in the middle. this highlights Ida aging in the portrait, as Albright exaggerates the crease lines (wrinkles) on her forehead, inward near her eyebrows and down towards her mouth. The puffiness underneath her eyes depict heaviness from the sense of hopelessness she in vacant eyes. As you look closer, it looks as Ida has this dark shadow around the crown of her nose as it’s made to look small.
The artist expresses timing of Ida struggle by showing avid emotions in her face, but the toll it’s taken on her body. She’s dressed in this short flurry blue nightgown, with a light purple shirt over the top. Albright symbolizes the isolation of stress on her body such as the nightgown not being able to completely cover excess rolls of her stomach and the sagginess of her breasts. Ida’s corpulent and dimpled legs have this white, grayish ashy tone that’s as like above show signs of weight gain.
More than just physical descriptions, Ida seem to me that once before she was extremely wealthy during her life, but as time went on she lost her fortune. Even as she props herself while looking at this hand mirror, her reflection gives that her whole world has sense of hopelessness. The blue palette and value of lightness details a dramatic and somber tone. As she sits and ponders the question “Now What”, she continues to apply powder to her face, the coloring in her face is slowly fading due to countless times she put on make-up. It begins to show that this may be a daily routine. Alongside her is this brownish wood dresser, that’s covered with a lace rumen that sits two crystal glass containers that hold of nothing, folded money, demised reddish hat and a vast of day old flowers.
Albright use of symmetry, strong line patterns and exaggerations of emotions helps create Ida’s ejective mood and her