The Blue-Clad Gambler

A sharply stylized portrait presents a pale, angular-faced figure in a blue and turquoise garment, holding a small rectangular object close to the chest. The enlarged eyes, compressed features, and emphatic dark contours give the sitter an alert, almost theatrical presence, while the mottled blue ground pushes the head and hands forward. Broad, visibly worked passages of paint and fractured planes recall the restless energy of early twentieth-century modernism.