22 Facts About Ivan Albright

Ivan Le Lorraine Albright was an American painter, sculptor and print-maker most renowned for his self-portraits, character studies, and still lifes.

From a family of artists and artisans, Albright emerged on the American art scene in the 1930s and established a reputation as one of the most enigmatic of the American Realists.

Ivan Albright shocked, awed and upset the viewing public through his emphasis on the fragility of the body, flesh and the human condition with such works as The Lineman, That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do, and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Ivan Albright's paternal great-great-grandfather Andreas Albrecht was a master gunsmith in Thuringia, Germany, a family trade passed down to Ivan Albright's grandfather Zachariah.

Likewise, Ivan's father Adam Emory Albright was an Impressionist painter and student of Thomas Eakins who built his reputation on landscapes and idealized paintings of children.

Ivan Albright's family moved frequently due to his father's career and it wasn't until 1910 that they settled in Hubbard Woods where Ivan and Malvin could attend New Trier High School.

Ivan Albright's brother enrolled at the same school shortly after.

Ivan Albright stayed there until he graduated in 1923, having exhibited The Philosopher and receiving Faculty Honorable Mention in both Life and Portrait Painting.

Bellows was at the time on sabbatical in Europe and so Ivan Albright instead chose to move to the National Academy of Design to study under Charles Webster Hawthorne.

Not long after, Ivan Albright began working on paintings that emphasized the microscopic quality of surface as much as baroque form, beginning with Woman.

Nonetheless, as did many other artists of the period, Ivan Albright participated in the Public Works of Art Project in Illinois.

Ivan Albright was supposed to receive thirty-eight dollars per week in the program as a "class A" artist, but he maintained that he never received payment for his works.

The decades of the 1950s and 1960s featured few large-scale works by Ivan Albright, but did see him expand his horizons with travel.

Between 1948 and 1964, Ivan Albright produced a number of oils and gouaches with western themes.

Ivan Albright's last series of paintings was a group of self-portraits executed between 1981 and 1983.

Themes through Ivan Albright's works include death, life, spiritual vs physical, and the effects of time.

Ivan Albright is looking into a hand mirror with a look of sadness on her face.

The prize at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York earned him a $3,500 purchase award towards the painting and its place in the permanent collection, but Ivan Albright set the purchase price at $125,000.

In 1943, Ivan Albright was commissioned to create the titular painting for Albert Lewin's film adaptation of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Ivan Albright's brother was originally chosen to do the beginning, uncorrupted painting of Gray.

Ivan Albright's painting of the corrupted Dorian Gray currently resides in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Allegedly, Ivan Albright kept retouching the painting while being shown at the Art Institute of Chicago.