Painted in 1944, The Ragged One is a representative example of Lebrun’s work of the early 1940s. Deeply affected by the human suffering and destruction of World War II, the artist gravitated to morbid, tortured subjects, which paved the way for his more mature works, including the Crucifixion Triptych (1950, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York), a group of paintings on the Holocaust, and a series of drawings illustrating Dante’s Inferno.

Despite their contorted and stark forms, Lebrun’s monochromatic figures possess a redemptive message. He was an expert draftsman who distorted human anatomy for expressive purposes, sometimes to the point of abstraction. Lebrun drew inspiration from the Renaissance and baroque painters of his native Italy and the Spanish masters El Greco, Francisco de Zurbarán, and especially Francisco de Goya.