As One Came Near with Curl'd Gray Beard, Sharp Eyes, and Smooth Bald Crown

Will Hicock Low · 1885

Medium

Black, gray and white gouache, with traces of black chalk, on cream wood-pulp laminate board

Original size

45.9 × 35.5 cm (18 1/8 × 14 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

This intimate character study, rendered in restrained tones of black, gray, and white, captures the weathered dignity of an unnamed elder with remarkable economy of means. Will Hicock Low was one of the most accomplished American illustrators and decorative painters of the late nineteenth century, trained in Paris under Jean-Léon Gérôme and deeply influenced by the French academic tradition. His facility with gouache — a medium demanding precision and confidence, with little room for correction — is on full display here, where layered washes build form and texture with a quiet authority. The descriptive title, reading almost like a line of verse, points to Low's close connections with the literary world of his era and his habit of treating illustration as a serious artistic endeavor equal to fine art. Low was a close personal friend of Robert Louis Stevenson and produced celebrated illustrations for several of his works, placing this study squarely within a career defined by the intersection of image and word. Our hand-painted oil reproduction translates Low's original tonal subtlety into the richer, more luminous language of oil on canvas, preserving the intimacy and quiet intensity of the source work while giving it a physical presence suited to any considered interior.