Samuel Johnson Woolf, 12 Feb 1880 - 3 - Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky - 1928 - T-Shirt

This is a standing, three-quarter charcoal portrait of a balding man in a light suit and dark tie, drawn in 1928 with a stern, watchful gaze.

Visual Elements & Composition

Pale beige paper fills most of the sheet, and the drawing is built from charcoal grey and near-black. The man is turned slightly to the left, with his head angled toward the viewer, and his brow is lowered and his mouth set. The jacket is described with confident contour lines and a few areas of solid shading, while a dense, hatched shadow sits behind his left side. The upper part of the sheet is left almost blank, so the figure and his posture dominate the vertical rectangle.

Meaning & Symbolism

The sitter is Igor Ivanovich Sikorsky, the Russian-born engineer who became a pioneer of aviation in the United States. He built some of the earliest multi-engined aircraft in Russia, later developed flying boats, and from the late 1930s worked on practical helicopters. The resolute expression and upright stance suit a man whose work centred on designing and testing new flying machines, and the portrait presents him as an engineer of determination. The drawing was made by Samuel Johnson Woolf, an American portraitist born in 1880 who worked in charcoal and chalk, in the same year Sikorsky was building up his aircraft company.

On the Unisex Heavy Cotton Tee

A portrait like this is a figure seen head-on, held at chest height the way a viewer meets a face across a room. Worn on the front, the vertical composition places Sikorsky's gaze and the blank upper field of the sheet where they can be read at a glance, and the hatched shadow at his side gives the print its weight and depth.