Raphael Soyer painted members of his family often and throughout his career. Painting Moses, his identical twin, was in many ways creating a self-portrait, for the two not only shared a common profession, they even worked in similar styles. During the decade this portrait was painted, Raphael also created Double Portrait, 1963 (Mrs. George H. Boynton, Tuxedo Park, N.Y.), which depicts the two sitting in a studio with easels cluttering the background.
The quiet, tired poignance of his brother is the sole theme of the painting. Moses’s mood might have been the result of his advanced age, but it might just as readily be explained by the preferences of both brother-painters for models who expressed a silent and somewhat resigned sadness. In Raphael’s case this tendency first appeared in the pathos of his scenes of the depression. Raphael often focused on his model’s face as an expression of this mood, and here placed his brother’s relatively small head in the center of a large composition. A cool palette of somber mauves, blue greens, and grays intensifies the mood. The emptiness of the room, with only a drawing tacked to a door in the background, emphasizes Moses’s solitary bearing. Moses is similarly depicted in Raphael’s most famous late work, Homage to Thomas Eakins, 1963-65 (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.), a large, crowded group portrait in which all the artists included appear to be en-tranced and in their own worlds despite the crowded nature of the composition.
Raphael always demonstrated a strong sense of design, shown here by his strategic placement of the figure. The fluid application of pigment in almost abstract terms is characteristic of his late, more painterly handling.
