Portrait painting
Photograph by celinecelineson Flickr.
That image is my delight; I direct my smiles to it, it is my joy. Portraiture s roots are likely found in prehistoric times, although few of Speed painting these works survive today. With Wyeth, realism, though overt, is secondary to the tonal qualities and mood of his paintings.
Dutch painter Frans Hals used fluid brush strokes of vivid color to enliven his group portraits, including those of the civil guards to which he belonged. However, most of these were done in a highly stylized fashion, and most in profile, usually on stone, metal, clay, plaster, or crystal.
Portraits of donors began to be shown as present, or participate in the main sacred scenes shown, and in more private court images subjects even appeared as significant figures such as the Virgin Mary. The Renaissance marked a turning point in the history of portraiture. Artists need to be knowledgeable about the underlying bone and tissue structure to make a convincing portrait. For complex compositions, the artist may first do a complete pencil, ink, charcoal, or oil sketch which is particularly useful if the sitter s available time is limited.
Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait. 1400 is one of two surviving panel portraits of Richard II of England, the earliest English King for whom we have contemporary examples.
Portraits are often important state and family records, as well as remembrances. Sargent is considered to be the last major exponent of the British portrait tradition beginning with van Dyck.
Filippo Lippi paved the way in developing sharper contours and sinuous lines During the Renaissance, the Florentine and Milanese nobility, in particular, wanted more realistic representations of themselves. Unlike in the rest of Europe, Dutch artists received no commissions from the Calvinist Church which had forbidden such images or from the aristocracy which was virtually non-existent.
His other memorable portraits included those of noblewomen Ginevra de’ Benci and Cecilia Gallerani. Raphael s surviving commission portraits are far more numerous than those of Leonardo, and they display a greater variety of poses, lighting, and technique. During the 4th century, the sculpted portrait dominated, with a retreat in favor of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like.
In a self-portrait, a righted handed artist would appear to be holding a brush in the left hand, unless the artist deliberately corrects the image or uses a second reversing mirror while painting. Occasionally, the client or the client s family is unhappy with the resulting portrait and the artist is obliged to re-touch it or do it over or withdraw from the commission without being paid, suffering the humiliation of failure. and portraits once again became clear likenesses.
Gainsborough s Blue Boy is one of the most famous and recognized portraits of all time, painted with very long brushes and thin oil color to achieve the shimmering effect of the blue costume. If an artist portrays him- or herself, the result is called a self-portrait. Historically, portrait paintings have primarily memorialized the rich and powerful.
Close s specialty was huge, hyper-realistic wall-sized head portraits based on photographic images. Many contemporary American artists, such as Andy Warhol, Alex Katz and Chuck Close, have made the human face a focal point of their work.
The posture of the subject is also carefully considered to reveal the emotional and physical state of the sitter, as is the costume. Also, oil colors dry more slowly, allowing the artist to make changes readily, such as altering facial details.
In the studios of many of the great portrait artists, the master would do only the head and hands, while the clothing and background would be completed by the principal apprentices. Oliver Cromwell famously demanded that his portrait show all these roughnesses, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me, otherwise I will never pay a farthing for it. After putting the sitter at ease and encouraging a natural pose, the artist studies his subject, looking for the one facial expression, out of many possibilities, that satisfies his concept of the sitter s essence.
French artists Eugène Delacroix and Théodore Géricault painted particularly fine portraits of this type, especially dashing horsemen. American artist Mary Cassatt, who trained and worked in France, is popular even today for her engaging paintings of mothers and children, as is Renoir.
Through this increase in the shadows and the lights, the face is given greater relief. Leonardo was a student of Verrocchio. In particular, Dutch painter Rembrandt explored the many expressions of the human face, especially as one of the premier self-portraitists (of which he painted over 60 in his lifetime).
The challenge of creating convincing full and three-quarter views stimulated experimentation and innovation. Jacques-Louis David celebrated portrait of Madame Récamier, wildly popular in exhibitions, was rejected by the sitter, as was John Singer Sargent s notorious Portrait of Madame X.
Sculpted heads of rulers and famous personalities like Socrates survive in some quantity, and like the individualized busts of Hellenistic rulers on coins, show that Greek portraiture could achieve a good likeness, and subjects were depicted with relatively little flattery - Socrates portraits show why he had a reputation for being ugly. Count Balthazar was so pleased with the portrait Raphael had created of his wife that he told the artist, Your image…alone can lighten my cares.
John Durand, 1768 John Singleton Copley, Paul Revere, 1770 Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon in His Study (1812), National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. Francisco de Goya, Charles IV of Spain and His Family, 1800-1801 Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, portrait of Napoleon on his Imperial Throne, 1806, Musée de l Armée, Paris Eugène Delacroix, portrait of George Sand, 1838, Ordrupgaard-Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark Gustave Courbet, Portrait of Charles Baudelaire, 1848 Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Alfred Sisley, 1868 James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist s Mother (1871) popularly known as Whistler s Mother Mary Cassatt, Portrait of Madame Sisley 1873 Edgar Degas, Portrait of Miss Cassatt, Seated, Holding Cards, 1876-1878 John Singer Sargent, Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1887. Paul Gauguin, The Painter of Sunflowers, Portrait of Vincent van Gogh, 1888 Vincent van Gogh, Portrait of Doctor Gachet, (first version), 1890 Cecilia Beaux, Sita and Sarita (Jeune Fille au Chat), 1893–1894 . Notable female artists include French painter Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Italian pastel artist Rosalba Carriera, and Swiss artist Angelica Kauffmann.
In his notebooks, Leonardo advises on the qualities of light in portrait painting: A very high degree of grace in the light and shadow is added to the faces of those who sit in the doorways of rooms that are dark, where the eyes of the observer see the shadowed part of the face obscured by the shadows of the room, and see the lighted part of the face with the greater brilliance which the air gives it. French painters Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir created some of the most popular images of individual sitters and groups.
Ingres, a student of David, is notable for his portraits in which a mirror is painted behind the subject to simulate a rear view of the subject. Rather than producing revolutionary innovations, Raphael great accomplishment was strengthening and refining the evolving currents of Renaissance art. In Venice around 1500, Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini dominated portrait painting.
The Dada painter Francis Picabia executed numerous portraits in his unique fashion. Clients who sought out Sir Joshua Reynolds knew that they would receive a flattering result, while sitters of Thomas Eakins knew to expect a realistic, unsparing portrait.
In May 2008, Freud s 1995 portrait Benefits Supervisor Sleeping was sold by auction by Christie s in New York City for $33.6 million, setting a world record for sale value of a painting by a living artist. Portrait paintings can be of individuals, couples, parents and children, families, or collegial groups.
During the 16th century, oil as a medium spread in popularity throughout Europe, allowing for more sumptuous renderings of clothing and jewelry. Sandro Botticelli, Piero della Francesca, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Lorenzo di Credi, and Leonardo da Vinci and other artists expanded their technique accordingly, adding portraiture to traditional religious and classical subjects.
They can be created in various media including oils, watercolor, pen and ink, pencil, charcoal, pastel, and mixed media. Rembrandt benefitted greatly from such commissions and from the general appreciation of art by bourgeois clients, who supported portraiture as well as still-life and landscapes painting.
English artists such as Lucian Freud (grandson of Sigmund Freud) and Francis Bacon have produced powerful paintings. Antonello da Messina was one of the first Italians to take advantage of oil.
Demonstrating his romanticism, Courbet painted several self-portraits showing himself in varying moods and expressions. In America, Thomas Eakins reigned as the premier portrait painter, taking realism to a new level of frankness, especially with his two portraits of surgeons at work, as well as those of athletes and musicians in action. Fauvist artist Henri Matisse produced powerful portraits using non-naturalistic, even garish, colors for skin tones.
His portrait of Napoleon on his imperial throne is a tour de force of regal portraiture. Max Ernst produced an example of a modern collegial portrait with his 1922 painting All Friends Together . Portrait production in Europe and the Americas generally declined in the 1940s and 1950s, a result of the increasing interest in abstraction and nonfigurative art.
But equally important, it showcases the newly developed technique of oil painting pioneered by van Eyck, which revolutionized art, and spread throughout Europe. Leading German portrait artists including Lucas Cranach, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Holbein the Younger who all mastered oil painting technique. Cézanne, on one extreme, insisted on over 100 sittings from his subject. Managing the sitter s expectations and mood is a serious concern for the portrait artist.
In addition to portrait painting, portraits can also be made in other media such as marble, bronze, ivory, wood, ceramic, etching, lithography, photography, even video and digital media. The term portrait painting can also describe the actual painted portrait. Their attention to the details of dress and texture increased the efficacy of portraits as testaments to worldly wealth, as evidenced by François Boucher s famous portraits of Madame de Pompadour attired in billowing silk gowns. The first major native portrait painters of the British school were English painters Thomas Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who also specialized in clothing their subjects in an eye-catching manner.
The Fayum portraits were painted on wood or ivory in wax and resin colors (encaustic) or with tempera, and inserted into the mummy wrapping, to remain with the body through eternity. While free-standing portrait painting diminished in Rome, the art of the portrait flourished in Roman sculptures, where sitters demanded realism, even if unflattering. Warhol s painting of Marilyn Monroe is an iconic example.
Among the earliest painters to develop oil technique was Jan van Eyck. This is aptly demonstrated with his landmark series of paintings known as the Helga pictures, the largest group of portraits of a single person by any major artist (247 studies of his neighbor Helga Testorf, clothed and nude, in varying surroundings, painted during the period 1971–1985). By the 1960s and 1970s, there was a revival of portraiture.
(Compare the portraits of Roman Emperors Constantine I and Theodosius I) In the Late Antique period the interest in an individual likeness declined considerably, and most portraits in late Roman coins and consular diptychs are hardly individualized at all, although at the same time Early Christian art was evolving fairly standardized images for the depiction of Jesus and the other major figures in christian art, such as John the Baptist, and Saint Peter. Most early medieval portraits were donor portraits, initially mostly of popes in Roman mosaics, and illuminated manuscripts, an example being a self-portrait by the writer, mystic, scientist, illuminator, and musician Hildegard of Bingen (1152). The tradition of the portrait miniature began, which remained popular until the age of photography, developing out of the skills of painters of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts.
In the Netherlands, Jan van Eyck was a leading portraitist. Artists may employ a wide-ranging palette of colors, as with Pierre-Auguste Renoir s On The Terrace (1881) or restrict themselves to mostly white or black, as with Gilbert Stuart s Portrait of George Washington (1796). Sometimes, the overall size of the portrait is an important consideration.
Chuck Close s enormous portraits created for museum display differ greatly from most portraits designed to fit in the home or to travel easily with the client. As Aristotle stated, The aim of Art is to present not the outward appearance of things, but their inner significance; for this, not the external manner and detail, constitutes true reality. In most cases, this results in a serious, closed lip stare, with anything beyond a slight smile being rather rare historically.
He studied in Italy and Germany, and in Paris. He demonstrated these innovations, pioneered by Italian masters such as Caravaggio, most notably in his famous Night Watch (1642).
In addition, the first significant art and dealer markets flourished in Holland at that time. With plenty of demand, Rembrandt was able to experiment with unconventional composition and technique, such as chiaroscuro. Additionally, Tamara de Lempicka s portraits successfully captured the Art Deco era with her streamlined curves, rich colors and sharp angles.
Edith Mahon , Eakins boldly conveys the unflattering emotions of sorrow and melancholy. The Realists mostly gave way to the Impressionists by the 1870s. Instead, commissions came from civic and businesses associations.
Portraitists create their work by commission, for public and private persons, or are inspired by admiration or affection for the subject. Trained in Belgium, he settled in Venice around 1475, and was a major influence on Giovanni Bellini and the Northern Italian school.
The background can be totally black and without content or a full scene which places the sitter in their social or recreational milieu. Self-portraits are usually produced with the help of a mirror, and the finished result is a mirror-image portrait, a reversal of what occurs in a normal portrait when sitter and artist are opposite each other. The famous Mona Lisa smile is an excellent example of applying subtle asymmetry to a face.
1067-1085), Chinese Portrait of the Zen Buddhist Wuzhun Shifan, 1238 AD, Chinese Lucas Cranach the Elder, Portrait of Martin Luther, 1529, Uffizi Diego Velázquez, Portrait of Philip IV, 1632 Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of Jan Six, 1654 The Rapalje Children, New York City. Painting in general reached a new level of balance, harmony, and insight, and the greatest artists (Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael) were considered geniuses , rising far above the tradesman status to valued servants of the court and the church. Many innovations in the various forms of portraiture evolved during this fertile period.
In many cases, the face is completed first, and the rest afterwards. Many modernists flocked to the photography studios to have their portraits made, including Baudelaire who, though he proclaimed photography an enemy of art , found himself attracted to photography s frankness and power.Sargent and Whistler were among those stimulated to expand their technique to create effects that the camera could not capture. Other early 20th-century artists also expanded the repertoire of portraiture in new directions.
He was equally apt at individual and group portraits, particularly of upper-class families. To keep the sitter engaged and motivated, the skillful artist will often maintain a pleasant demeanor and conversation.
The artists used directed light to define texture and the simple roundness of faces and limbs. Frequently, an artist takes into account where the final portrait will hang and the colors and style of the surrounding décor. Creating a portrait can take considerable time, usually requiring several sittings.
Owing to his wide-ranging interests and in accordance with his scientific mind, his output of drawings and preliminary studies is immense though his finished artistic output is relatively small. In the art of the ancient civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, especially in Egypt, depictions of rulers and gods abound.
Other prominent American portraitists of the colonial era were John Smibert,Thomas Sully, Ralph Earl, John Trumbull, Benjamin West, Robert Feke, James Peale, Charles Willson Peale, and Rembrandt Peale. In the late 18th century and early 19th century, neoclassical artists continued the tradition of depicting subjects in the latest fashions, which for women by then, meant diaphanous gowns derived from ancient Greek and Roman clothing styles. Bacon s portraits are notable for their nightmarish quality.
In America, Robert Henri and George Bellows were fine portraitists of the 1920s and 1930 s of the American realist school. Around the end of the century, the first oil portraits of contemporary individuals, painted on small wood panels, emerged in Burgundy and France, first as profiles, then in other views.
Noted for their shimmering surfaces and rich dabs of paint, Impressionist portraits are often disarmingly intimate and appealing. Leading Early Netherlandish masters of the portrait included Jan van Eyck, Robert Campin and [[Rogier van der Weyden.
He was the most successful portrait painter of his era, using a mostly realistic technique often effused with the brilliant use of color. Profile portraits, inspired by ancient medallions, were particularly popular in Italy between 1450 and 1500.
It memorializes the artist and the children of the Spanish royal family, and apparently the sitters are the royal couple who are seen only as reflections in a mirror. Rococo artists, who were particularly interested in rich and intricate ornamentation, were masters of the refined portrait. Or as Charles Dickens put it, there are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk. Portrait painting can depict the subject full length , half length , head and shoulders (also called a bust ), or ‘head’, as well as in profile, three-quarter view , or full face , with varying directions of light and shadow.
The greater realism and detail of the Northern artists during the 15th century was due in part to the finer brush strokes and effects possible with oil colors, while the Italian and Spanish painters were still using tempera. Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, both Post-Impressionists, painted revealing portraits of people they knew, swirling in color but not necessarily flattering.
Occasionally, artists have created portraits with multiple views, as with Sir Anthony van Dyck s Triple Portrait of Charles I . Among the other possible variables, the subject can be clothed or nude; indoors or out; standing, seated, reclining; even horse-mounted. Gainsborough was also noted for his elaborate background settings for his subjects. The two British artists had opposite opinions on using assistants.
German artists such as Otto Dix and Max Beckmann produced notable examples of expressionist portraiture. Beckmann was a prolific self-portraitist, producing at least twenty-seven. British art was represented by the Vorticists, who painted some notable portraits in the early part of the 20th century.
Some subjects voice strong preferences, others let the artist decide entirely. Partly out of interest in the natural world and partly out of interest in the classical cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, portraits—both painted and sculpted—were given an important role in Renaissance society and valued as objects, and as depictions of earthly success and status.
American society painter Cecilia Beaux, called the female Sargent , was born of a French father, studied abroad and gained success back home, sticking with traditional methods. Rubens’ portrait of himself and his first wife (1609) in their wedding attire is a virtuoso example of the couple portrait. One of the innovations of Renaissance art was the improved rendering of facial expressions to accompany different emotions.
The Wilton Diptych of ca. There were even outside specialists who handled specific items such as drapery and clothing, such as Joseph van Aken The use of symbolic elements placed around the sitter (including signs, household objects, animals, and plants) was often used to encode the painting with the moral or religious character of the subject, or with symbols representing the sitter s occupation, interests, or social status.
Also affecting the quality of the images, was the switch from wood to canvas, starting in Italy in the early part of the 16th century and spreading to Northern Europe over the next century. Canvas resists cracking better than wood, holds pigments better, and needs less preparation―but it was initially much scarcer than wood. Early on, the Northern Europeans abandoned the profile, and started producing portraits of realistic volume and perspective.
In many portraits, such as Portrait of Mrs. Sargent was born in Florence, Italy to American parents.
These full-face portraits from Roman Egypt are fortunate exceptions. Another portraitist compared to Sargent for his lush technique was Italian-born Parisian artist Giovanni Boldini, a friend of Degas and Whistler. American-born Internationalist James Abbott McNeill Whistler was well-connected with European artists and also painted some exceptional portraits, most famously his Arrangement in Grey and Black, The Artist s Mother (1871), also known as Whistler s Mother . The development of photography in the 19th century had a significant effect on portraiture, supplanting the earlier camera obscura which had also been previously used as an aid in painting.
The successors of Alexander the Great began the practice of adding his head (as a deified figure) to their coins, and were soon using their own. Roman portraiture adopted traditions of portraiture from both the Etruscans and Greeks, and developed a very strong tradition, linked to their religious use of ancestor portraits, as well as Roman politics. Over time, however, it became more common for middle-class patrons to commission portraits of their families and colleagues.
This interest in the human face also fostered the creation of the first caricatures, credited to the Carracci Academy, run by painters of the Carracci family in the late 16th century in Bologna, Italy (see Annibale Carracci). Group portraits were produced in great numbers during the Baroque period, particularly in the Netherlands. Also during that century, before the invention of photography, miniature portraits―painted with incredible precision and often encased in gold or enameled lockets―were highly-valued. In the United States, John Singleton Copley, schooled in the refined British manner, became the leading painter of full-size and miniature portraits, with his hyper-realistic pictures of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere especially well-regarded.
Medals, with their two–sided images, also inspired a short-lived vogue for two-sided paintings early in the Renaissance. Northern European artists led the way in realistic portraits of secular subjects. French painters Jacques-Louis David and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres demonstrated virtuosity in this draftsman-like technique as well as a keen eye for character.
Today, the portrait painting is still commissioned by governments, corporations, groups, clubs, and individuals. A well-executed portrait is expected to show the inner essence of the subject (from the artist s point of view) or a flattering representation, not just a literal likeness. In a society dominated increasingly by secular leaders in powerful courts, images of opulently attired figures were a means to affirm the authority of important individuals.
Partly due to their meager incomes, many of the Impressionists relied on family and friends to model for them, and they painted intimate groups and single figures in either outdoors or in light-filled interiors. Another prominent American portraitist who trained abroad was William Merritt Chase.
One exception, however, was Andrew Wyeth who developed into the leading American realist portrait painter. Flemish painters Sir Anthony van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens excelled at this type of portraiture, while Jan Vermeer produced portraits mostly of the middle class, at work and play indoors.
Again, the few painted survivals, in the Fayum portraits, Tomb of Aline and the Severan Tondo, all from Egypt under Roman rule, are clearly provincial productions that reflect Greek rather than Roman styles, but we have a wealth of sculpted heads, including many individualized portraits from middle-class tombs, and thousands of types of coin portraits. Much the largest group of painted portraits are the funeral paintings that survived in the dry climate of Egypt s Fayum district (see illustration, below), dating from the 2nd to 4th century A.D. They present a somewhat realistic sense of proportion and individual detail (though the eyes are generally over-sized and the artistic skill varies considerably from artist to artist).
Spanish painter Francisco de Goya painted some of the most searching and provocative images of the period, including La maja desnuda (c. John Trumbull s portrait General George Washington was rejected by the committee that commissioned it. A successful portrait, however, can gain the life-long gratitude of a client.
Leonardo and Pisanello were among the first Italian artists to add allegorical symbols to their secular portraits. One of best-known portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vinci s painting titled Mona Lisa, named for Lisa del Giocondo, a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany and the wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. In Spain, Diego Velázquez painted Las Meninas (1656), one of the most famous and enigmatic group portraits of all time.
The Arnolfini Marriage (1434, National Gallery, London) is a landmark of Western art, an early example of a full-length couple portrait, superbly painted in rich colors and exquisite detail. Egyptian portraiture placed relatively little emphasis on likeness, at least until the period of Akhenaten in the 14th century BC.
Portrait painting of notables in China probably goes back to over 1000 B.C., though none survive from that age. One of the best portraitists of 16th-century Italy was Sofonisba Anguissola from Cremona, who infused her individual and group portraits with new levels of complexity. Court portraiture in France began when Flemish artist Jean Clouet painted his opulent likeness of Francis I of France around 1525. During the Baroque and Rococo periods (17th century and 18th century, respectively), portraits became even more important records of status and position.
Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun advised fellow artists to flatter women and compliment their appearance to gain their cooperation at the sitting. Central to the successful execution of the portrait is a mastery of human anatomy. Otherwise, the general form then a rough likeness is sketched out on the canvas in pencil, charcoal, or thin oil.
Oil colors can produce more texture and grades of thickness, and can be layered more effectively, with the addition of increasingly thick layers one over another (known by painters as ‘fat over lean’). Human faces are asymmetrical and skillful portrait artists reproduce this with subtle left-right differences.
They received the highest commissions from the leading officials of the state. They are equally, if not more so, celebrated for their powerful self-portraits. John Singer Sargent also spanned the change of century, but he rejected overt Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
Bellini s portrait of Doge Loredan is considered to be one of the finest portraits of the Renaissance and ably demonstrates the artist s mastery of the newly arrived techniques of oil painting. Portrait painting is a genre in painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject.
As to the faithfulness of the portrait to the sitter s appearance, portraitists are generally consistent in their approach. (see Gallery below) Romantic artists who worked during the first half of the 19th century painted portraits of inspiring leaders, beautiful women, and agitated subjects, using lively brush strokes and dramatic, sometimes moody, lighting.
1797-1800), as well as famous court portraits of Charles IV. The realist artists of the 19th century, such as Gustave Courbet, created objective portraits depicting lower and middle class people. These are almost the only paintings of the Roman period that have survived, aside from frescos, though it is known from the writings of Pliny the Elder that portrait painting was well established in Greek times, and practiced by both men and women artists.
Cranach was one of the first artists to paint life-sized full-length commissions, a tradition popular from then on. Also noteworthy is Géricault s series of portraits of mental patients (1822-1824).
After becoming a member of the Guild of Painters, he began to accept independent commissions. Copley is also notable for his efforts to merge portraiture with the academically more revered art of history painting, which he attempted with his group portraits of famous military men.
Jamie Wyeth continues in the realist tradition of his father Andrew, producing famous portraits whose subjects range from Presidents to pigs. Court portrait of Emperor Shenzong of Song (r. Existing Chinese portraits go back to about 1000 A.D. From literary evidence we know that ancient Greek painting included portraiture, often highly accurate if the praises of writers are to be believed, but no painted examples remain.
Cézanne s relied on highly simplified forms in his portraits, avoiding detail while emphasizing color juxtapositions. Expressionist painters provided some of the most haunting and compelling psychological studies ever produced.
