Portrait painting
Encyclopedia
Portrait painting is a genre
in painting
, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait. In addition to portrait painting, portraits can also be made in other media such as, etching
, lithography
, photography
, even video and digital media
.
The term 'portrait painting' can also describe the actual painted portrait. Portraitists create their work by commission, for public and private persons, or are inspired by admiration or affection for the subject. Portraits are often important state and family records, as well as remembrances.
Historically, portrait paintings have primarily memorialized the rich and powerful. Over time, however, it became more common for middle-class patrons to commission portraits of their families and colleagues. 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. 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." Artists may strive for photographic realism or an impressionistic similarity in depicting their subject, but this differs from a caricature
which attempts to reveal character through exaggeration of physical features. The artist generally attempts a representative portrayal, as Edward Burne-Jones
stated, "The only expression allowable in great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, not anything temporary, fleeting, or accidental."
In most cases, this results in a serious, closed lip stare, with anything beyond a slight smile being rather rare historically. Or as Charles Dickens
put it, "there are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk." Even given these limitations, a full range of subtle emotions is possible from quiet menace to gentle contentment. However, with the mouth relatively neutral, much of the facial expression needs to be created through the eyes and eyebrows. As author and artist Gordon C. Aymar states, "the eyes are the place one looks for the most complete, reliable, and pertinent information" about the subject. And the eyebrows can register, "almost single-handedly, wonder, pity, fright, pain, cynicism, concentration, wistfulness, displeasure, and expectation, in infinite variations and combinations."
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. Occasionally, artists have created portraits with multiple views, as with Anthony van Dyck's "Triple Portrait of Charles I". There are even a few portraits where the front of the subject is not visible at all. Andrew Wyeth
's Christina's World
(1948) is a famous example, where the pose of the crippled girl with her back turned to the viewer integrates with the setting in which she is placed to convey the artist's interpretation.
Another example of the "three-quarter view" in portraiture, in this case photography, can be found here, at the Portrait
article.
Among the other possible variables, the subject can be clothed or nude; indoors or out; standing, seated, reclining; even horse-mounted. Portrait paintings can be of individuals, couples, parents and children, families, or collegial groups. They can be created in various media including oils
, watercolor, pen and ink, pencil
, charcoal
, pastel
, and mixed media
. 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. 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. Cézanne, on one extreme, insisted on over 100 sittings from his subject. Goya on the other hand, preferred one long day's sitting. The average is about four. Portraitists sometimes present their sitters with a portfolio of drawings or photos from which a sitter would select a preferred pose, as did Sir Joshua Reynolds. Some, such as Hans Holbein the Younger
make a drawing of the face, then complete the rest of the painting without the sitter. In the 18th century, it would typically take about one year to deliver a completed portrait to a client.
Managing the sitter's expectations and mood is a serious concern for the portrait artist. As to the faithfulness of the portrait to the sitter's appearance, portraitists are generally consistent in their approach. 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. Some subjects voice strong preferences, others let the artist decide entirely. 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. The posture of the subject is also carefully considered to reveal the emotional and physical state of the sitter, as is the costume. To keep the sitter engaged and motivated, the skillful artist will often maintain a pleasant demeanor and conversation. 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
. Human faces are asymmetrical and skillful portrait artists reproduce this with subtle left-right differences. 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. Otherwise, the general form then a rough likeness is sketched out on the canvas in pencil, charcoal, or thin oil. In many cases, the face is completed first, and the rest afterwards. 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. There were even outside specialists who handled specific items such as drapery and clothing, such as Joseph van Aken
Some artists in past times used lay-figures or dolls to help establish and execute the pose and the clothing. 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. 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. 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. 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
. John Trumbull
's portrait "General George Washington" was rejected by the committee that commissioned it. The famously prickly Gilbert Stuart
once replied to a client's dissatisfaction with his wife's portrait by retorting, "You brought me a potato, and you expect a peach!"
A successful portrait, however, can gain the life-long gratitude of a client. 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. That image is my delight; I direct my smiles to it, it is my joy."
, especially in Egypt, depictions of rulers and gods abound. However, most of these were done in a highly stylized fashion, and most in profile, usually on stone, metal, clay, plaster, or crystal. 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 BC, though none survive from that age. Existing Chinese portraits go back to about 1000 AD
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. 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. 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. 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 AD. These are almost the only paintings of the Roman period that have survived, aside from fresco
s, 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. In his times, Pliny complained of the declining state of Roman portrait art, "The painting of portraits which used to transmit through the ages the accurate likenesses of people, has entirely gone out…Indolence has destroyed the arts." These full-face portraits from Roman Egypt are fortunate exceptions. 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). 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. During the 4th century, the sculpted portrait dominated, with a retreat in favor of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like. (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 diptych
s 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 portrait
s, initially mostly of popes in Roman mosaic
s, and illuminated manuscript
s, an example being a self-portrait by the writer, mystic, scientist, illuminator, and musician Hildegard of Bingen
(1152). As with contemporary coins, there was little attempt at a likeness. Stone tomb monuments spread in the Romanesque
period. Between 1350-1400, secular figures began to reappear in frescos and panel painting
s, such as in Master Theodoric's Charles IV receiving fealty, and portraits once again became clear likenesses. 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. The Wilton Diptych of ca. 1400 is one of two surviving panel portraits of Richard II of England
, the earliest English King for whom we have contemporary examples. Leading Early Netherlandish
masters of the portrait included Jan van Eyck
, Robert Campin
and Rogier van der Weyden. 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. 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. 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. 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
. Profile portraits, inspired by ancient medallions, were particularly popular in Italy between 1450 and 1500. Medals, with their two–sided images, also inspired a short-lived vogue for two-sided paintings early in the Renaissance. Classical sculpture, such as the Apollo Belvedere
, also influenced the choice of poses utilized by Renaissance portraitists, poses that have continued in usage through the centuries.
Northern European artists led the way in realistic portraits of secular subjects. 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
. Among the earliest painters to develop oil technique was Jan van Eyck
. 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’). Also, oil colors dry more slowly, allowing the artist to make changes readily, such as altering facial details. Antonello da Messina
was one of the first Italians to take advantage of oil. Trained in Belgium, he settled in Venice around 1475, and was a major influence on Giovanni Bellini
and the Northern Italian school. During the 16th century, oil as a medium spread in popularity throughout Europe, allowing for more sumptuous renderings of clothing and jewelry. 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 the Netherlands, Jan van Eyck
was a leading portraitist. 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. 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. Cranach was one of the first artists to paint life-sized full-length commissions, a tradition popular from then on. At that time, England had no portrait painters of the first rank, and artists like Holbein were in demand by English patrons. His painting of Sir Thomas More (1527), his first important patron in England, has nearly the realism of a photograph. Holbein made his great success painting the royal family, including Henry VIII
. Dürer was an outstanding draftsman and one of the first major artists to make a sequence of self-portraits, including a full-face painting. He also placed his self-portrait figure (as an onlooker) in several of his religious paintings. Dürer began making self-portraits at the age of thirteen. Later, Rembrandt would amplify that tradition.
In Italy, Masaccio
led the way in modernizing the fresco by adopting more realistic perspective. Filippo Lippi
paved the way in developing sharper contours and sinuous lines and his pupil Raphael
extended realism in Italy to a much higher level in the following decades with his monumental wall paintings. During this time, the betrothal portrait became popular, a particular specialty of Lorenzo Lotto
. During the early Renaissance, portrait paintings were generally small and sometimes covered with protective lids, hinged or sliding.
During the Renaissance, the Florentine and Milanese nobility, in particular, wanted more realistic representations of themselves. The challenge of creating convincing full and three-quarter views stimulated experimentation and innovation. 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. 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. The famous "Mona Lisa smile" is an excellent example of applying subtle asymmetry to a face. In his notebooks, Leonardo advises on the qualities of light in portrait painting:
Leonardo was a student of Verrocchio. After becoming a member of the Guild of Painters, he began to accept independent commissions. 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. 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. Rather than producing revolutionary innovations, Raphael's great accomplishment was strengthening and refining the evolving currents of Renaissance art. He was particularly expert in the group portrait. His masterpiece the School of Athens
is one of the foremost group frescoes, containing likenesses of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Bramante, and Raphael himself, in the guise of ancient philosophers. It was not the first group portrait of artists. Decades earlier, Paolo Uccello
had painted a group portrait including Giotto, Donatello
, Antonio Manetti
, and Brunelleschi
. As he rose in prominence, Raphael became a favorite portraitist of the popes. While many Renaissance artists eagerly accepted portrait commissions, a few artists refused them, most notably Raphael's rival Michelangelo
, who instead undertook the huge commissions of the Sistine Chapel
.
In Venice around 1500, Gentile Bellini
and Giovanni Bellini
dominated portrait painting. They received the highest commissions from the leading officials of the state. 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. Bellini is also one of the first artists in Europe to sign their work, though he rarely dated them. Later in the 16th century, Titian
assumed much the same role, particularly by expanding the variety of poses and sittings of his royal subjects. Titian was perhaps the first great child portraitist. After Titian succumbed to the plague, Tintoretto
and Veronese
became leading Venetian artists, helping the transition to Italian Mannerism
. The Mannerists contributed many exceptional portraits that emphasized material richness and elegantly complex poses, as in the works of Agnolo Bronzino and Jacopo da Pontormo. Bronzino made his fame portraying the Medici
family. His daring portrait of Cosimo I de' Medici, shows the austere ruler in armor with a wary eye gazed to his extreme right, in sharp contrast to most royal paintings which show their sitters as benign sovereigns. El Greco
, who trained in Venice for twelve years, went in a more extreme direction after his arrival in Spain, emphasizing his "inner vision" of the sitter to the point of diminishing the reality of physical appearance. 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. King Francis was a great patron of artists and an avaricious art collector who invited Leonardo da Vinci to live in France during his later years. The Mona Lisa
stayed in France after Leonardo died there.
During the Baroque
and Rococo
periods (17th and 18th centuries, respectively), portraits became even more important records of status and position. 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. 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. Rubens’ portrait of himself and his first wife (1609) in their wedding attire is a virtuoso example of the couple portrait. Rubens fame extended beyond his art—he was a courtier, diplomat, art collector, and successful businessman. His studio was one of the most extensive of that time, employing specialists in still-life, landscape, animal and genre scenes, in addition to portraiture. Van Dyck trained there for two years. Charles I of England
first employed Rubens, then imported van Dyck as his court painter, knighting him and bestowing on him courtly status. Van Dyck not only adapted Rubens’ production methods and business skills, but also his elegant manners and appearance. As was recorded, "He always went magnificently dress’d, had a numerous and gallant equipage, and kept so noble a table in his apartment, that few princes were not more visited, or better serv’d." In France, Hyacinthe Rigaud
dominated in much the same way, as a remarkable chronicler of royalty, painting the portraits of five French kings.
One of the innovations of Renaissance art was the improved rendering of facial expressions to accompany different emotions. 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). 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. 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. Instead, commissions came from civic and businesses associations. 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. 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. 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
. He demonstrated these innovations, pioneered by Italian masters such as Caravaggio
, most notably in his famous Night Watch
(1642). The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp (1632) is another fine example of Rembrandt's mastery of the group painting, in which he bathes the corpse in bright light to draw attention to the center of the painting while the clothing and background merge into black, making the faces of the surgeon and the students standout. It is also the first painting that Rembrandt signed with his full name.
In Spain, Diego Velázquez
painted Las Meninas
(1656), one of the most famous and enigmatic group portraits of all time. 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. Starting out as primarily a genre painter, Velazquez quickly rose to prominence as the court painter of Philip IV
, excelling in the art of portraiture, particularly in extending the complexity of group portraits.
Rococo artists, who were particularly interested in rich and intricate ornamentation, were masters of the refined 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. 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. Gainsborough was also noted for his elaborate background settings for his subjects.
The two British artists had opposite opinions on using assistants. Reynolds employing them regularly (sometimes doing only 20 percent of the painting himself) while Gainsborough rarely did. Sometimes a client would extract a pledge from the artist, as did Sir Richard Newdegate from portraitist Peter Lely
(van Dyck's successor in England), who promised that the portrait would be "from the Beginning to ye end drawne with my owne hands." Unlike the exactitude employed by the Flemish masters, Reynolds summed up his approach to portraiture by stating that, "the grace, and, we may add, the likeness, consists more in taking the general air, than in observing the exact similitude of every feature." Also prominent in England was William Hogarth
, who dared to buck conventional methods by introducing touches of humor in his portraits. His "Self-portrait with Pug" is clearly more a humorous take on his pet than a self-indulgent painting.
In the 18th century, female painters gained new importance, particularly in the field of portraiture. Notable female artists include French painter Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Italian pastel artist Rosalba Carriera
, and Swiss artist Angelica Kauffmann
. 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. 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. Equally famous was Gilbert Stuart
who painted over 1,000 portraits and was especially known for his presidential portraiture. Stuart painted over 100 replicas of George Washington
alone. Stuart worked quickly and employed softer, less detailed brush strokes than Copley to capture the essence of his subjects. Sometimes he would make several versions for a client, allowing the sitter to pick their favorite. Noted for his rosy cheek tones, Stuart wrote, "flesh is like no other substance under heaven. It has all the gaiety of the silk-mercer's shop without its gaudiness of gloss, and all the softness of old mahogany, without its sadness." 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. The artists used directed light to define texture and the simple roundness of faces and limbs. 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. 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. His portrait of Napoleon on his imperial throne is a tour de force of regal portraiture. (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. French artists Eugène Delacroix
and Théodore Géricault
painted particularly fine portraits of this type, especially dashing horsemen. Also noteworthy is Géricault's series of portraits of mental patients (1822–1824). Spanish painter Francisco de Goya painted some of the most searching and provocative images of the period, including La maja desnuda
(c. 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. Demonstrating his romanticism, Courbet painted several self-portraits showing himself in varying moods and expressions. Other French realists include Honoré Daumier
who produced many caricatures of his contemporaries. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
chronicled some of the famous performers of the theater, including Jane Avril, capturing them in motion. French painter Édouard Manet
, was an important transitional artist whose work hovers between realism and impressionism
. He was a portraitist of outstanding insight and technique, with his painting of Stéphane Mallarmé
being a good example of his transitional style. His contemporary Edgar Degas
was primarily a realist and his painting Portrait of the Bellelli Family
is an insightful rendering of an unhappy family and one of his finest portraits.
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. In many portraits, such as "Portrait of Mrs. Edith Mahon", Eakins boldly conveys the unflattering emotions of sorrow and melancholy.
The Realists mostly gave way to the Impressionists
by the 1870s. 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. Noted for their shimmering surfaces and rich dabs of paint, Impressionist portraits are often disarmingly intimate and appealing. French painters Claude Monet
and Pierre-Auguste Renoir
created some of the most popular images of individual sitters and groups. 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. Paul Gauguin
and Vincent van Gogh
, both Post-Impressionists
, painted revealing portraits of people they knew, swirling in color but not necessarily flattering. 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. He was the most successful portrait painter of his era, using a mostly realistic technique often effused with the brilliant use of color. He was equally apt at individual and group portraits, particularly of upper-class families. Sargent was born in Florence, Italy to American parents. He studied in Italy and Germany, and in Paris. Sargent is considered to be the last major exponent of the British portrait tradition beginning with van Dyck. Another prominent American portraitist who trained abroad was William Merritt Chase
. 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. 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". Even with his portraits, as with his tonal landscapes, Whistler wanted his viewers to focus on the harmonic arrangement of form and color in his paintings. Whistler used a subdued palette to create his intended effects, stressing color balance and soft tones. As he stated, "as music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with the harmony of sound or of color." Form and color were also central to Cézanne's portraits, while even more extreme color and brush stroke technique dominate the portraits by André Derain
, and Henri Matisse
.
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. 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. By providing a cheap alternative, photography supplanted much of the lowest level of portrait painting. Some realist artists, such as Thomas Eakins
and Edgar Degas
, were enthusiastic about camera photography and found it to be a useful aid to composition. From the Impressionists forward, portrait painters found a myriad number of ways to reinterpret the portrait to compete effectively with photography. 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. Fauvist
artist Henri Matisse
produced powerful portraits using non-naturalistic, even garish, colors for skin tones. Cézanne's relied on highly simplified forms in his portraits, avoiding detail while emphasizing color juxtapositions. Austrian Gustav Klimt
's unique style applied Byzantine motifs and gold paint to his memorable portraits. His pupil Oskar Kokoschka
was an important portraitist of the Viennese upper class. Prolific Spanish artist Pablo Picasso
painted many portraits, including several cubist
renderings of his mistresses, in which the likeness of the subject is grossly distorted to achieve an emotional statement well beyond the bounds of normal caricature.
Expressionist
painters provided some of the most haunting and compelling psychological studies ever produced. 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. Amedeo Modigliani
painted many portraits in his elongated style which depreciated the "inner person" in favor of strict studies of form and color. To help achieve this, he de-emphasized the normally expressive eyes and eyebrows to the point of blackened slits and simple arches.
British art was represented by the Vorticists, who painted some notable portraits in the early part of the 20th century. The Dada
painter Francis Picabia
executed numerous portraits in his unique fashion. Additionally, Tamara de Lempicka
's portraits successfully captured the Art Deco
era with her streamlined curves, rich colors and sharp angles. In America, Robert Henri
and George Bellows
were fine portraitists of the 1920s and 1930s of the American realist school. Max Ernst
produced an example of a modern collegial portrait with his 1922 painting "All Friends Together".
A significant contribution to the development of portrait painting of 1930-2000 was made by Russian artists, mainly working in the traditions of realist and figurative painting. Among them should be called Isaak Brodsky
, Nikolai Fechin, Abram Arkhipov
, Lev Russov
, Engels Kozlov
, and others.
Portrait production in Europe (excluding Russia) and the Americas generally declined in the 1940s and 1950s, a result of the increasing interest in abstraction and nonfigurative art. One exception, however, was Andrew Wyeth
who developed into the leading American realist portrait painter. With Wyeth, realism, though overt, is secondary to the tonal qualities and mood of his paintings. 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. English artists such as Lucian Freud
(grandson of Sigmund Freud
) and Francis Bacon
have produced powerful paintings. Bacon's portraits are notable for their nightmarish quality. 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. Many contemporary American artists, such as Andy Warhol
, Alex Katz
and Chuck Close
, have made the human face a focal point of their work. Warhol's painting of Marilyn Monroe
is an iconic example. Close's specialty was huge, hyper-realistic wall-sized "head" portraits based on photographic images. Jamie Wyeth
continues in the realist tradition of his father Andrew, producing famous portraits whose subjects range from Presidents to pigs.
Hierarchy of genres
A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value....
in painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait. In addition to portrait painting, portraits can also be made in other media such as, etching
Etching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...
, lithography
Lithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
, photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
, even video and digital media
Digital media
Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital form. It can refer to the technical aspect of storage and transmission Digital media is a form of electronic media where data is stored in digital (as opposed to analog) form. It can refer to the technical aspect of...
.
The term 'portrait painting' can also describe the actual painted portrait. Portraitists create their work by commission, for public and private persons, or are inspired by admiration or affection for the subject. Portraits are often important state and family records, as well as remembrances.
Historically, portrait paintings have primarily memorialized the rich and powerful. Over time, however, it became more common for middle-class patrons to commission portraits of their families and colleagues. Today, the portrait painting is still commissioned by governments, corporations, groups, clubs, and individuals.
Technique and practice
Portrait
thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...
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. As Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
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." Artists may strive for photographic realism or an impressionistic similarity in depicting their subject, but this differs from a caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
which attempts to reveal character through exaggeration of physical features. The artist generally attempts a representative portrayal, as Edward Burne-Jones
Edward Burne-Jones
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1st Baronet was a British artist and designer closely associated with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who worked closely with William Morris on a wide range of decorative arts as a founding partner in Morris, Marshall, Faulkner, and Company...
stated, "The only expression allowable in great portraiture is the expression of character and moral quality, not anything temporary, fleeting, or accidental."
In most cases, this results in a serious, closed lip stare, with anything beyond a slight smile being rather rare historically. Or as Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
put it, "there are only two styles of portrait painting: the serious and the smirk." Even given these limitations, a full range of subtle emotions is possible from quiet menace to gentle contentment. However, with the mouth relatively neutral, much of the facial expression needs to be created through the eyes and eyebrows. As author and artist Gordon C. Aymar states, "the eyes are the place one looks for the most complete, reliable, and pertinent information" about the subject. And the eyebrows can register, "almost single-handedly, wonder, pity, fright, pain, cynicism, concentration, wistfulness, displeasure, and expectation, in infinite variations and combinations."
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. Occasionally, artists have created portraits with multiple views, as with Anthony van Dyck's "Triple Portrait of Charles I". There are even a few portraits where the front of the subject is not visible at all. Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Newell Wyeth was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century....
's Christina's World
Christina's World
Christina's World is a 1948 painting by American painter Andrew Wyeth, and one of the best-known American paintings of the middle 20th century...
(1948) is a famous example, where the pose of the crippled girl with her back turned to the viewer integrates with the setting in which she is placed to convey the artist's interpretation.
Another example of the "three-quarter view" in portraiture, in this case photography, can be found here, at the Portrait
Portrait
thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...
article.
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...
, watercolor, pen and ink, pencil
Pencil
A pencil is a writing implement or art medium usually constructed of a narrow, solid pigment core inside a protective casing. The case prevents the core from breaking, and also from marking the user’s hand during use....
, charcoal
Charcoal
Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of carbon, and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen...
, pastel
Pastel
Pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation....
, and mixed media
Mixed media
Mixed media, in visual art, refers to an artwork in the making of which more than one medium has been employed.There is an important distinction between "mixed-media" artworks and "multimedia art". Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct...
. Artists may employ a wide-ranging palette of colors, as with Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...
's On The Terrace (1881) or restrict themselves to mostly white or black, as with Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...
's Portrait of George Washington (1796).
Sometimes, the overall size of the portrait is an important consideration. Chuck Close
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
'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. 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. Cézanne, on one extreme, insisted on over 100 sittings from his subject. Goya on the other hand, preferred one long day's sitting. The average is about four. Portraitists sometimes present their sitters with a portfolio of drawings or photos from which a sitter would select a preferred pose, as did Sir Joshua Reynolds. Some, such as Hans Holbein the Younger
Hans Holbein the Younger
Hans Holbein the Younger was a German artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He is best known as one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He also produced religious art, satire and Reformation propaganda, and made a significant contribution to the history...
make a drawing of the face, then complete the rest of the painting without the sitter. In the 18th century, it would typically take about one year to deliver a completed portrait to a client.
Managing the sitter's expectations and mood is a serious concern for the portrait artist. As to the faithfulness of the portrait to the sitter's appearance, portraitists are generally consistent in their approach. Clients who sought out Sir Joshua Reynolds knew that they would receive a flattering result, while sitters of Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...
knew to expect a realistic, unsparing portrait. Some subjects voice strong preferences, others let the artist decide entirely. Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell
Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....
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. The posture of the subject is also carefully considered to reveal the emotional and physical state of the sitter, as is the costume. To keep the sitter engaged and motivated, the skillful artist will often maintain a pleasant demeanor and conversation. 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
Human anatomy
Human anatomy is primarily the scientific study of the morphology of the human body. Anatomy is subdivided into gross anatomy and microscopic anatomy. Gross anatomy is the study of anatomical structures that can be seen by the naked eye...
. Human faces are asymmetrical and skillful portrait artists reproduce this with subtle left-right differences. Artists need to be knowledgeable about the underlying bone and tissue structure to make a convincing portrait.
Joseph Van Aken
Joseph Van Aken, a Flemish artist, who was born in 1709 at Antwerp, who passed a great part of his life in England. He was employed by eminent landscape painters to paint the costumes of the figures in their pictures, in which he was very skilful, and thereby acquired the name of'Schneider van Aken'...
Some artists in past times used lay-figures or dolls to help establish and execute the pose and the clothing. 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. 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. 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.
Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...
celebrated portrait of Madame Récamier
Portrait of Madame Récamier
Portrait of Madame Récamier is an 1800 portrait of Juliette Récamier by Jacques Louis David showing her reclining on an empire style sofa in an empire line dressed as a modern vestal virgin...
, wildly popular in exhibitions, was rejected by the sitter, as was John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
's notorious Portrait of Madame X
Portrait of Madame X
Madame X or Portrait of Madame X is the informal title of a portrait painting by John Singer Sargent of a young socialite named Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau, wife of Pierre Gautreau. The model was an American expatriate who married a French banker, and became notorious in Parisian high society...
. John Trumbull
John Trumbull
John Trumbull was an American artist during the period of the American Revolutionary War and was notable for his historical paintings...
's portrait "General George Washington" was rejected by the committee that commissioned it. The famously prickly Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...
once replied to a client's dissatisfaction with his wife's portrait by retorting, "You brought me a potato, and you expect a peach!"
A successful portrait, however, can gain the life-long gratitude of a client. Count Balthazar was so pleased with the portrait Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
had created of his wife that he told the artist, "Your image…alone can lighten my cares. That image is my delight; I direct my smiles to it, it is my joy."
Ancient world
Portraiture's roots are likely found in prehistoric times, although few of these works survive today. In the art of the ancient civilizations of the Fertile CrescentFertile Crescent
The Fertile Crescent, nicknamed "The Cradle of Civilization" for the fact the first civilizations started there, is a crescent-shaped region containing the comparatively moist and fertile land of otherwise arid and semi-arid Western Asia. The term was first used by University of Chicago...
, especially in Egypt, depictions of rulers and gods abound. However, most of these were done in a highly stylized fashion, and most in profile, usually on stone, metal, clay, plaster, or crystal. Egyptian portraiture placed relatively little emphasis on likeness, at least until the period of Akhenaten
Akhenaten
Akhenaten also spelled Echnaton,Ikhnaton,and Khuenaten;meaning "living spirit of Aten") known before the fifth year of his reign as Amenhotep IV , was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt who ruled for 17 years and died perhaps in 1336 BC or 1334 BC...
in the 14th century BC. Portrait painting of notables in China probably goes back to over 1000 BC, though none survive from that age. Existing Chinese portraits go back to about 1000 AD
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. Sculpted heads of rulers and famous personalities like Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
survive in some quantity, and like the individualized busts of Hellenistic
Hellenistic portraiture
Hellenistic portraiture was one of the most innovative features of Hellenistic art.-Bibliography: Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, Il problema del ritratto, in L'arte classica, Editori Riuniti, Rome 1984. Pierluigi De Vecchi and Elda Cerchiari, I tempi dell'arte, volume 1, Bompiani, Milano 1999....
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. The successors of Alexander the Great began the practice of adding his head (as a deified
Greek hero cult
Hero cults were one of the most distinctive features of ancient Greek religion. In Homeric Greek, "hero" refers to a man who was fighting on either side during the Trojan War...
figure) to their coins, and were soon using their own.
Roman portraiture
Roman portraiture
Roman portraiture was one of the most significant periods in the development of portrait art. Originating from Ancient Rome, it continued for almost five centuries. Roman portraiture is characterised by unusual realism and the desire to convey images of nature in the high quality style often seen...
adopted traditions of portraiture from both the Etruscans
Etruscan art
Etruscan art was the form of figurative art produced by the Etruscan civilization in central Italy between the 9th and 2nd centuries BC. Particularly strong in this tradition were figurative sculpture in terracotta and cast bronze, wall-painting and metalworking .-History:The origins of...
and Greeks, and developed a very strong tradition, linked to their religious use of ancestor portraits, as well as Roman politics. Again, the few painted survivals, in the Fayum portraits, Tomb of Aline
Tomb of Aline
The Tomb of Aline is an ancient Egyptian grave from the time of Tiberius or Hadrian, excavated at Hawara in 1892.-Find conditions, finds, date:...
and the Severan Tondo
Severan Tondo
The Severan Tondo, from circa AD 200, is one of the few preserved examples of panel painting from Classical Antiquity. It is a tempera or egg-based painting on a circular wooden panel , with a diameter of 30.5 cm...
, 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 AD. These are almost the only paintings of the Roman period that have survived, aside from fresco
Fresco
Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...
s, though it is known from the writings of Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
that portrait painting was well established in Greek times, and practiced by both men and women artists. In his times, Pliny complained of the declining state of Roman portrait art, "The painting of portraits which used to transmit through the ages the accurate likenesses of people, has entirely gone out…Indolence has destroyed the arts." These full-face portraits from Roman Egypt are fortunate exceptions. 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). The Fayum portraits were painted on wood or ivory in wax and resin colors (encaustic) or with tempera
Tempera
Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist...
, 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. During the 4th century, the sculpted portrait dominated, with a retreat in favor of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like. (Compare the portraits of Roman Emperors Constantine I and Theodosius I
Theodosius I
Theodosius I , also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire. During his reign, the Goths secured control of Illyricum after the Gothic War, establishing their homeland...
) In the Late Antique period the interest in an individual likeness declined considerably, and most portraits in late Roman coins and consular diptych
Consular diptych
In Late Antiquity a consular diptych was a particular type of diptych which could function as a writing tablet but was also intended as a deluxe commemorative object, commissioned by a consul ordinarius and then distributed to reward those who had supported his candidature as...
s 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
John the Baptist
John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...
, and Saint Peter
Saint Peter
Saint Peter or Simon Peter was an early Christian leader, who is featured prominently in the New Testament Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The son of John or of Jonah and from the village of Bethsaida in the province of Galilee, his brother Andrew was also an apostle...
.
Middle Ages
Donor portrait
A donor portrait or votive portrait is a portrait in a larger painting or other work showing the person who commissioned and paid for the image, or a member of his, or her, family...
s, initially mostly of popes in Roman mosaic
Mosaic
Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...
s, and illuminated manuscript
Illuminated manuscript
An illuminated manuscript is a manuscript in which the text is supplemented by the addition of decoration, such as decorated initials, borders and miniature illustrations...
s, an example being a self-portrait by the writer, mystic, scientist, illuminator, and musician Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard of Bingen
Blessed Hildegard of Bingen , also known as Saint Hildegard, and Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, Benedictine abbess, visionary, and polymath. Elected a magistra by her fellow nuns in 1136, she founded the monasteries of Rupertsberg in 1150 and...
(1152). As with contemporary coins, there was little attempt at a likeness. Stone tomb monuments spread in the Romanesque
Romanesque art
Romanesque art refers to the art of Western Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 13th century, or later, depending on region. The preceding period is increasingly known as the Pre-Romanesque...
period. Between 1350-1400, secular figures began to reappear in frescos and panel painting
Panel painting
A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel made of wood, either a single piece, or a number of pieces joined together. Until canvas became the more popular support medium in the 16th century, it was the normal form of support for a painting not on a wall or vellum, which was used for...
s, such as in Master Theodoric's Charles IV receiving fealty, and portraits once again became clear likenesses. 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. The Wilton Diptych of ca. 1400 is one of two surviving panel portraits of Richard II of England
Richard II of England
Richard II was King of England, a member of the House of Plantagenet and the last of its main-line kings. He ruled from 1377 until he was deposed in 1399. Richard was a son of Edward, the Black Prince, and was born during the reign of his grandfather, Edward III...
, the earliest English King for whom we have contemporary examples. Leading Early Netherlandish
Early Netherlandish painting
Early Netherlandish painting refers to the work of artists active in the Low Countries during the 15th- and early 16th-century Northern renaissance, especially in the flourishing Burgundian cities of Bruges and Ghent...
masters of the portrait included Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....
, Robert Campin
Robert Campin
Robert Campin , now usually identified as the artist known as the Master of Flémalle, is usually considered the first great master of Early Netherlandish painting...
and Rogier van der Weyden. 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.
Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
marked a turning point in the history of portraiture. 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. 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. The tradition of the portrait miniature
Portrait miniature
A portrait miniature is a miniature portrait painting, usually executed in gouache, watercolour, or enamel.Portrait miniatures began to flourish in 16th century Europe and the art was practiced during the 17th century and 18th century...
began, which remained popular until the age of photography, developing out of the skills of painters of the miniatures in illuminated manuscripts
Miniature (illuminated manuscript)
The word miniature, derived from the Latin minium, red lead, is a picture in an ancient or medieval illuminated manuscript; the simple decoration of the early codices having been miniated or delineated with that pigment...
. Profile portraits, inspired by ancient medallions, were particularly popular in Italy between 1450 and 1500. Medals, with their two–sided images, also inspired a short-lived vogue for two-sided paintings early in the Renaissance. Classical sculpture, such as the Apollo Belvedere
Apollo Belvedere
The Apollo Belvedere or Apollo of the Belvedere—also called the Pythian Apollo— is a celebrated marble sculpture from Classical Antiquity. It was rediscovered in central Italy in the late 15th century, during the Renaissance...
, also influenced the choice of poses utilized by Renaissance portraitists, poses that have continued in usage through the centuries.
Northern European artists led the way in realistic portraits of secular subjects. 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
Oil painting
Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil—especially in early modern Europe, linseed oil. Often an oil such as linseed was boiled with a resin such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body...
, while the Italian and Spanish painters were still using tempera
Tempera
Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist...
. Among the earliest painters to develop oil technique was Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....
. 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’). Also, oil colors dry more slowly, allowing the artist to make changes readily, such as altering facial details. Antonello da Messina
Antonello da Messina
Antonello da Messina, properly Antonello di Giovanni di Antonio was an Italian painter from Messina, Sicily, active during the Italian Renaissance...
was one of the first Italians to take advantage of oil. Trained in Belgium, he settled in Venice around 1475, and was a major influence on Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it...
and the Northern Italian school. During the 16th century, oil as a medium spread in popularity throughout Europe, allowing for more sumptuous renderings of clothing and jewelry. Also affecting the quality of the images, was the switch from wood
Panel painting
A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel made of wood, either a single piece, or a number of pieces joined together. Until canvas became the more popular support medium in the 16th century, it was the normal form of support for a painting not on a wall or vellum, which was used for...
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 the Netherlands, Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck
Jan van Eyck was a Flemish painter active in Bruges and considered one of the best Northern European painters of the 15th century....
was a leading portraitist. 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. But equally important, it showcases the newly developed technique of oil painting pioneered by van Eyck, which revolutionized art, and spread throughout Europe.
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder , was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving...
, Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
, and Hans Holbein the Younger
Hans Holbein the Younger
Hans Holbein the Younger was a German artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He is best known as one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He also produced religious art, satire and Reformation propaganda, and made a significant contribution to the history...
who all mastered oil painting technique. Cranach was one of the first artists to paint life-sized full-length commissions, a tradition popular from then on. At that time, England had no portrait painters of the first rank, and artists like Holbein were in demand by English patrons. His painting of Sir Thomas More (1527), his first important patron in England, has nearly the realism of a photograph. Holbein made his great success painting the royal family, including Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
. Dürer was an outstanding draftsman and one of the first major artists to make a sequence of self-portraits, including a full-face painting. He also placed his self-portrait figure (as an onlooker) in several of his religious paintings. Dürer began making self-portraits at the age of thirteen. Later, Rembrandt would amplify that tradition.
In Italy, Masaccio
Masaccio
Masaccio , born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was the first great painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense...
led the way in modernizing the fresco by adopting more realistic perspective. Filippo Lippi
Filippo Lippi
Fra' Filippo Lippi , also called Lippo Lippi, was an Italian painter of the Italian Quattrocento .-Biography and works:...
paved the way in developing sharper contours and sinuous lines and his pupil Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
extended realism in Italy to a much higher level in the following decades with his monumental wall paintings. During this time, the betrothal portrait became popular, a particular specialty of Lorenzo Lotto
Lorenzo Lotto
Lorenzo Lotto was a Northern Italian painter draughtsman and illustrator, traditionally placed in the Venetian school. He painted mainly altarpieces, religious subjects and portraits...
. During the early Renaissance, portrait paintings were generally small and sometimes covered with protective lids, hinged or sliding.
During the Renaissance, the Florentine and Milanese nobility, in particular, wanted more realistic representations of themselves. The challenge of creating convincing full and three-quarter views stimulated experimentation and innovation. Sandro Botticelli
Sandro Botticelli
Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi, better known as Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance...
, Piero della Francesca
Piero della Francesca
Piero della Francesca was a painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Artists, to contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting was characterized by its...
, Domenico Ghirlandaio
Domenico Ghirlandaio
Domenico Ghirlandaio was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. Among his many apprentices was Michelangelo.-Early years:Ghirlandaio's full name is given as Domenico di Tommaso di Currado di Doffo Bigordi...
, Lorenzo di Credi
Lorenzo di Credi
Lorenzo di Credi was an Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor. He first influenced Leonardo da Vinci and then was greatly influenced by him.-Life:...
, and Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
and other artists expanded their technique accordingly, adding portraiture to traditional religious and classical subjects. Leonardo and Pisanello
Pisanello
Pisanello , known professionally as Antonio di Puccio Pisano or Antonio di Puccio da Cereto, also erroneously called Vittore Pisano by Giorgio Vasari, was one of the most distinguished painters of the early Italian Renaissance and Quattrocento...
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
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
's painting titled Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa is a portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519...
, named for Lisa del Giocondo
Lisa del Giocondo
Lisa del Giocondo , also known as Lisa Gherardini, Lisa di Antonio Maria Gherardini and Mona Lisa, was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany in Italy...
, a member of the Gherardini family of Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
and Tuscany
Tuscany
Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....
and the wife of wealthy Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. The famous "Mona Lisa smile" is an excellent example of applying subtle asymmetry to a face. 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. Through this increase in the shadows and the lights, the face is given greater relief."
Leonardo was a student of Verrocchio. After becoming a member of the Guild of Painters, he began to accept independent commissions. 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. 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. Rather than producing revolutionary innovations, Raphael's great accomplishment was strengthening and refining the evolving currents of Renaissance art. He was particularly expert in the group portrait. His masterpiece the School of Athens
The School of Athens
The School of Athens, or in Italian, is one of the most famous paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1510 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms now known as the , in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican...
is one of the foremost group frescoes, containing likenesses of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Bramante, and Raphael himself, in the guise of ancient philosophers. It was not the first group portrait of artists. Decades earlier, Paolo Uccello
Paolo Uccello
Paolo Uccello , born Paolo di Dono, was an Italian painter and a mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. Giorgio Vasari in his book Lives of the Artists wrote that Uccello was obsessed by his interest in perspective and would stay up all night in his...
had painted a group portrait including Giotto, Donatello
Donatello
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi , also known as Donatello, was an early Renaissance Italian artist and sculptor from Florence...
, Antonio Manetti
Antonio Manetti
Antonio Manetti was an Italian mathematician and architect from Florence. He was also the biographer of the architect Filippo Brunelleschi....
, and Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi
Filippo Brunelleschi was one of the foremost architects and engineers of the Italian Renaissance. He is perhaps most famous for inventing linear perspective and designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, but his accomplishments also included bronze artwork, architecture , mathematics,...
. As he rose in prominence, Raphael became a favorite portraitist of the popes. While many Renaissance artists eagerly accepted portrait commissions, a few artists refused them, most notably Raphael's rival Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
, who instead undertook the huge commissions of the Sistine Chapel
Sistine Chapel
Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It is famous for its architecture and its decoration that was frescoed throughout by Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio...
.
In Venice around 1500, Gentile Bellini
Gentile Bellini
Gentile Bellini was an Italian painter. From 1474 he was the official portrait artist for the Doges of Venice.- Biography :...
and Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it...
dominated portrait painting. They received the highest commissions from the leading officials of the state. 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. Bellini is also one of the first artists in Europe to sign their work, though he rarely dated them. Later in the 16th century, Titian
Titian
Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 better known as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near...
assumed much the same role, particularly by expanding the variety of poses and sittings of his royal subjects. Titian was perhaps the first great child portraitist. After Titian succumbed to the plague, Tintoretto
Tintoretto
Tintoretto , real name Jacopo Comin, was a Venetian painter and a notable exponent of the Renaissance school. For his phenomenal energy in painting he was termed Il Furioso...
and Veronese
Paolo Veronese
Paolo Veronese was an Italian painter of the Renaissance in Venice, famous for paintings such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi...
became leading Venetian artists, helping the transition to Italian Mannerism
Mannerism
Mannerism is a period of European art that emerged from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520. It lasted until about 1580 in Italy, when a more Baroque style began to replace it, but Northern Mannerism continued into the early 17th century throughout much of Europe...
. The Mannerists contributed many exceptional portraits that emphasized material richness and elegantly complex poses, as in the works of Agnolo Bronzino and Jacopo da Pontormo. Bronzino made his fame portraying the Medici
Medici
The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...
family. His daring portrait of Cosimo I de' Medici, shows the austere ruler in armor with a wary eye gazed to his extreme right, in sharp contrast to most royal paintings which show their sitters as benign sovereigns. El Greco
El Greco
El Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...
, who trained in Venice for twelve years, went in a more extreme direction after his arrival in Spain, emphasizing his "inner vision" of the sitter to the point of diminishing the reality of physical appearance. One of the best portraitists of 16th-century Italy was Sofonisba Anguissola
Sofonisba Anguissola
Sofonisba Anguissola was an Italian painter of the Renaissance.-The Anguissola family:...
from Cremona, who infused her individual and group portraits with new levels of complexity.
Court portraiture in France began when Flemish artist Jean Clouet
Jean Clouet
Jean Clouet was a miniaturist and painter who worked in France during the Renaissance. He was the father of François Clouet.-Biography:Clouet was allegedly born in Brussels....
painted his opulent likeness of Francis I of France
Francis I of France
Francis I was King of France from 1515 until his death. During his reign, huge cultural changes took place in France and he has been called France's original Renaissance monarch...
around 1525. King Francis was a great patron of artists and an avaricious art collector who invited Leonardo da Vinci to live in France during his later years. The Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa
Mona Lisa is a portrait by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci. It is a painting in oil on a poplar panel, completed circa 1503–1519...
stayed in France after Leonardo died there.
Baroque and Rococo
Baroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
and Rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
periods (17th and 18th centuries, respectively), portraits became even more important records of status and position. 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. 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. Rubens’ portrait of himself and his first wife (1609) in their wedding attire is a virtuoso example of the couple portrait. Rubens fame extended beyond his art—he was a courtier, diplomat, art collector, and successful businessman. His studio was one of the most extensive of that time, employing specialists in still-life, landscape, animal and genre scenes, in addition to portraiture. Van Dyck trained there for two years. Charles I of England
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
first employed Rubens, then imported van Dyck as his court painter, knighting him and bestowing on him courtly status. Van Dyck not only adapted Rubens’ production methods and business skills, but also his elegant manners and appearance. As was recorded, "He always went magnificently dress’d, had a numerous and gallant equipage, and kept so noble a table in his apartment, that few princes were not more visited, or better serv’d." In France, Hyacinthe Rigaud
Hyacinthe Rigaud
Hyacinthe Rigaud was a French baroque painter of Catalan origin whose career was based in Paris.He is renowned for his portrait paintings of Louis XIV, the royalty and nobility of Europe, and members of their courts and considered one of the most notable French portraitists of the classical period...
dominated in much the same way, as a remarkable chronicler of royalty, painting the portraits of five French kings.
One of the innovations of Renaissance art was the improved rendering of facial expressions to accompany different emotions. 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). 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
Annibale Carracci
Annibale Carracci was an Italian Baroque painter.-Early career:Annibale Carracci was born in Bologna, and in all likelihood first apprenticed within his family...
).
Group portraits were produced in great numbers during the Baroque period, particularly in the Netherlands. 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. Instead, commissions came from civic and businesses associations. Dutch painter Frans Hals
Frans Hals
Frans Hals was a Dutch Golden Age painter. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art. Hals was also instrumental in the evolution of 17th century group portraiture.-Biography:Hals was born in 1580 or 1581, in Antwerp...
used fluid brush strokes of vivid color to enliven his group portraits, including those of the civil guards to which he belonged. 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. 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
Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro in art is "an Italian term which literally means 'light-dark'. In paintings the description refers to clear tonal contrasts which are often used to suggest the volume and modelling of the subjects depicted"....
. He demonstrated these innovations, pioneered by Italian masters such as Caravaggio
Caravaggio
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...
, most notably in his famous Night Watch
Night Watch (painting)
Night Watch or The Night Watch or The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq is the common name of one of the most famous works by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn....
(1642). The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp (1632) is another fine example of Rembrandt's mastery of the group painting, in which he bathes the corpse in bright light to draw attention to the center of the painting while the clothing and background merge into black, making the faces of the surgeon and the students standout. It is also the first painting that Rembrandt signed with his full name.
In Spain, Diego Velázquez
Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
painted Las Meninas
Las Meninas
Las Meninas is a 1656 painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The work's complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and creates an uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures...
(1656), one of the most famous and enigmatic group portraits of all time. 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. Starting out as primarily a genre painter, Velazquez quickly rose to prominence as the court painter of Philip IV
Philip IV of Spain
Philip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640...
, excelling in the art of portraiture, particularly in extending the complexity of group portraits.
Rococo artists, who were particularly interested in rich and intricate ornamentation, were masters of the refined 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
François Boucher
François Boucher was a French painter, a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture...
's famous portraits of Madame de Pompadour attired in billowing silk gowns.
Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...
and Sir Joshua Reynolds, who also specialized in clothing their subjects in an eye-catching manner. Gainsborough's Blue Boy
The Blue Boy
The Blue Boy is an oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough. Perhaps Gainsborough's most famous work, it is thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall, the son of a wealthy hardware merchant, although this was never proved...
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. Gainsborough was also noted for his elaborate background settings for his subjects.
The two British artists had opposite opinions on using assistants. Reynolds employing them regularly (sometimes doing only 20 percent of the painting himself) while Gainsborough rarely did. Sometimes a client would extract a pledge from the artist, as did Sir Richard Newdegate from portraitist Peter Lely
Peter Lely
Sir Peter Lely was a painter of Dutch origin, whose career was nearly all spent in England, where he became the dominant portrait painter to the court.-Life:...
(van Dyck's successor in England), who promised that the portrait would be "from the Beginning to ye end drawne with my owne hands." Unlike the exactitude employed by the Flemish masters, Reynolds summed up his approach to portraiture by stating that, "the grace, and, we may add, the likeness, consists more in taking the general air, than in observing the exact similitude of every feature." Also prominent in England was William Hogarth
William Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
, who dared to buck conventional methods by introducing touches of humor in his portraits. His "Self-portrait with Pug" is clearly more a humorous take on his pet than a self-indulgent painting.
In the 18th century, female painters gained new importance, particularly in the field of portraiture. Notable female artists include French painter Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Italian pastel artist Rosalba Carriera
Rosalba Carriera
Rosalba Carriera was a Venetian Rococo painter. In her younger years, she specialized in portrait miniatures...
, and Swiss artist Angelica Kauffmann
Angelica Kauffmann
Maria Anna Angelika/Angelica Katharina Kauffman was a Swiss-Austrian Neoclassical painter. Kauffman is the preferred spelling of her name; it is the form she herself used most in signing her correspondence, documents and paintings.- Early years :She was born at Chur in Graubünden, Switzerland,...
. 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
John Singleton Copley
John Singleton Copley was an American painter, born presumably in Boston, Massachusetts, and a son of Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Irish. He is famous for his portrait paintings of important figures in colonial New England, depicting in particular middle-class subjects...
, schooled in the refined British manner, became the leading painter of full-size and miniature portraits, with his hyper-realistic pictures of Samuel Adams
Samuel Adams
Samuel Adams was an American statesman, political philosopher, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. As a politician in colonial Massachusetts, Adams was a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, and was one of the architects of the principles of American...
and Paul Revere
Paul Revere
Paul Revere was an American silversmith and a patriot in the American Revolution. He is most famous for alerting Colonial militia of approaching British forces before the battles of Lexington and Concord, as dramatized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, Paul Revere's Ride...
especially well-regarded. 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. Equally famous was Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...
who painted over 1,000 portraits and was especially known for his presidential portraiture. Stuart painted over 100 replicas of George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
alone. Stuart worked quickly and employed softer, less detailed brush strokes than Copley to capture the essence of his subjects. Sometimes he would make several versions for a client, allowing the sitter to pick their favorite. Noted for his rosy cheek tones, Stuart wrote, "flesh is like no other substance under heaven. It has all the gaiety of the silk-mercer's shop without its gaudiness of gloss, and all the softness of old mahogany, without its sadness." Other prominent American portraitists of the colonial era were John Smibert, Thomas Sully
Thomas Sully
Thomas Sully was an American painter, mostly of portraits.-Early life:Sully was born in Horncastle, Lincolnshire, England, to the actors Matthew and Sarah Sully. In March 1792 the Sullys and their nine children immigrated to Richmond, Virginia, where Thomas’s uncle managed a theater...
, Ralph Earl, John Trumbull
John Trumbull
John Trumbull was an American artist during the period of the American Revolutionary War and was notable for his historical paintings...
, Benjamin West
Benjamin West
Benjamin West, RA was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence...
, Robert Feke
Robert Feke
Robert Feke was an American portrait painter born on Long Island, New York. Little is known for certain about his life before 1741, which is the year he painted his first portrait, Family of Isaac Royall. Sixteen portraits in total are known to be by Feke, and an additional 50 are disputed to be...
, James Peale
James Peale
James Peale was an American painter, best known for his miniature and still life paintings, and a younger brother of noted painter Charles Willson Peale....
, Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale
Charles Willson Peale was an American painter, soldier and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, as well as establishing one of the first museums....
, and Rembrandt Peale
Rembrandt Peale
Rembrandt Peale was an American artist and museum keeper. A prolific portrait painter, he was especially acclaimed for his likenesses of presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson...
.
19th century
Neoclassicism
Neoclassicism is the name given to Western movements in the decorative and visual arts, literature, theatre, music, and architecture that draw inspiration from the "classical" art and culture of Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome...
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. The artists used directed light to define texture and the simple roundness of faces and limbs. French painters Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David
Jacques-Louis David was an influential French painter in the Neoclassical style, considered to be the preeminent painter of the era...
and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres demonstrated virtuosity in this draftsman-like technique as well as a keen eye for character. 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. His portrait of Napoleon on his imperial throne is a tour de force of regal portraiture. (see Gallery below)
Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
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. French artists Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
and Théodore Géricault
Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...
painted particularly fine portraits of this type, especially dashing horsemen. Also noteworthy is Géricault's series of portraits of mental patients (1822–1824). Spanish painter Francisco de Goya painted some of the most searching and provocative images of the period, including La maja desnuda
La Maja Desnuda
La maja desnuda is an oil on canvas painting by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya , portraying a nude woman reclining on a bed of pillows. It was executed some time between 1797 and 1800, and is sometimes said to be the first clear depiction of female pubic hair in a large Western painting...
(c. 1797-1800), as well as famous court portraits of Charles IV
Charles IV of Spain
Charles IV was King of Spain from 14 December 1788 until his abdication on 19 March 1808.-Early life:...
.
The realist
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
artists of the 19th century, such as Gustave Courbet
Gustave Courbet
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. The Realist movement bridged the Romantic movement , with the Barbizon School and the Impressionists...
, created objective portraits depicting lower and middle class people. Demonstrating his romanticism, Courbet painted several self-portraits showing himself in varying moods and expressions. Other French realists include Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....
who produced many caricatures of his contemporaries. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...
chronicled some of the famous performers of the theater, including Jane Avril, capturing them in motion. French painter Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet
Édouard Manet was a French painter. One of the first 19th-century artists to approach modern-life subjects, he was a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism....
, was an important transitional artist whose work hovers between realism and impressionism
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
. He was a portraitist of outstanding insight and technique, with his painting of Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé
Stéphane Mallarmé , whose real name was Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Dadaism, Surrealism, and Futurism.-Biography:Stéphane...
being a good example of his transitional style. His contemporary Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
was primarily a realist and his painting Portrait of the Bellelli Family
Portrait of the Bellelli Family
The Bellelli Family, also known as Family Portrait, is an oil painting on canvas by Edgar Degas , painted ca. 1858–1867, housed in the Musée d'Orsay...
is an insightful rendering of an unhappy family and one of his finest portraits.
In America, Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...
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. In many portraits, such as "Portrait of Mrs. Edith Mahon", Eakins boldly conveys the unflattering emotions of sorrow and melancholy.
Impressionism
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s...
by the 1870s. 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. Noted for their shimmering surfaces and rich dabs of paint, Impressionist portraits are often disarmingly intimate and appealing. French painters Claude Monet
Claude Monet
Claude Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. . Retrieved 6 January 2007...
and Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to...
created some of the most popular images of individual sitters and groups. American artist Mary Cassatt
Mary Cassatt
Mary Stevenson Cassatt was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists...
, who trained and worked in France, is popular even today for her engaging paintings of mothers and children, as is Renoir. Paul Gauguin
Paul Gauguin
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin was a leading French Post-Impressionist artist. He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer...
and Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
, both Post-Impressionists
Post-Impressionism
Post-Impressionism is the term coined by the British artist and art critic Roger Fry in 1910 to describe the development of French art since Manet. Fry used the term when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and Post-Impressionism...
, painted revealing portraits of people they knew, swirling in color but not necessarily flattering. They are equally, if not more so, celebrated for their powerful self-portraits.
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
also spanned the change of century, but he rejected overt Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. He was the most successful portrait painter of his era, using a mostly realistic technique often effused with the brilliant use of color. He was equally apt at individual and group portraits, particularly of upper-class families. Sargent was born in Florence, Italy to American parents. He studied in Italy and Germany, and in Paris. Sargent is considered to be the last major exponent of the British portrait tradition beginning with van Dyck. Another prominent American portraitist who trained abroad was William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase was an American painter known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons The New School for Design.- Early life and training :He was born in Williamsburg , Indiana, to the family...
. American society painter Cecilia Beaux
Cecilia Beaux
Cecilia Beaux was an American society portraitist, in the manner of John Singer Sargent. She was a near contemporary of better-known American artist Mary Cassatt and also received her training in Philadelphia and France...
, called the "female Sargent", was born of a French father, studied abroad and gained success back home, sticking with traditional methods. Another portraitist compared to Sargent for his lush technique was Italian-born Parisian artist Giovanni Boldini
Giovanni Boldini
Giovanni Boldini was an Italian genre and portrait painter. According to , he was known as the "Master of Swish" because of his flowing style of painting.-Early life:...
, 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". Even with his portraits, as with his tonal landscapes, Whistler wanted his viewers to focus on the harmonic arrangement of form and color in his paintings. Whistler used a subdued palette to create his intended effects, stressing color balance and soft tones. As he stated, "as music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with the harmony of sound or of color." Form and color were also central to Cézanne's portraits, while even more extreme color and brush stroke technique dominate the portraits by André Derain
André Derain
André Derain was a French artist, painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.-Early years:...
, and Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
.
The development of photography in the 19th century had a significant effect on portraiture, supplanting the earlier camera obscura
Camera obscura
The camera obscura is an optical device that projects an image of its surroundings on a screen. It is used in drawing and for entertainment, and was one of the inventions that led to photography. The device consists of a box or room with a hole in one side...
which had also been previously used as an aid in painting. 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. By providing a cheap alternative, photography supplanted much of the lowest level of portrait painting. Some realist artists, such as Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...
and Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas[p] , born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, was a French artist famous for his work in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism although he rejected the term, and preferred to be called a realist...
, were enthusiastic about camera photography and found it to be a useful aid to composition. From the Impressionists forward, portrait painters found a myriad number of ways to reinterpret the portrait to compete effectively with photography. Sargent and Whistler were among those stimulated to expand their technique to create effects that the camera could not capture.
20th century
Fauvism
Fauvism is the style of les Fauves , a short-lived and loose group of early twentieth-century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism...
artist Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
produced powerful portraits using non-naturalistic, even garish, colors for skin tones. Cézanne's relied on highly simplified forms in his portraits, avoiding detail while emphasizing color juxtapositions. Austrian Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects...
's unique style applied Byzantine motifs and gold paint to his memorable portraits. His pupil Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...
was an important portraitist of the Viennese upper class. Prolific Spanish artist Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
painted many portraits, including several cubist
Cubism
Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde art movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture...
renderings of his mistresses, in which the likeness of the subject is grossly distorted to achieve an emotional statement well beyond the bounds of normal caricature.
Expressionist
Expressionism
Expressionism was a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas...
painters provided some of the most haunting and compelling psychological studies ever produced. German artists such as Otto Dix
Otto Dix
Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of Weimar society and the brutality of war. Along with George Grosz, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.-Early life and...
and Max Beckmann
Max Beckmann
Max Beckmann was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor, and writer. Although he is classified as an Expressionist artist, he rejected both the term and the movement...
produced notable examples of expressionist portraiture. Beckmann was a prolific self-portraitist, producing at least twenty-seven. Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
painted many portraits in his elongated style which depreciated the "inner person" in favor of strict studies of form and color. To help achieve this, he de-emphasized the normally expressive eyes and eyebrows to the point of blackened slits and simple arches.
British art was represented by the Vorticists, who painted some notable portraits in the early part of the 20th century. The Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...
painter Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia
Francis Picabia was a French painter, poet, and typographist, associated with both the Dada and Surrealist art movements.- Early life :...
executed numerous portraits in his unique fashion. Additionally, Tamara de Lempicka
Tamara de Lempicka
Tamara de Lempicka , born Maria Górska in Moscow, in the Russian Empire, was a Polish Art Deco painter and "the first woman artist to be a glamour star."- Early life :...
's portraits successfully captured the Art Deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
era with her streamlined curves, rich colors and sharp angles. In America, Robert Henri
Robert Henri
Robert Henri was an American painter and teacher. He was a leading figure of the Ashcan School in art.- Early life :...
and George Bellows
George Bellows
George Wesley Bellows was an American realist painter, known for his bold depictions of urban life in New York City, becoming, according to the Columbus Museum of Art, "the most acclaimed American artist of his generation".-Youth:Bellows was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio...
were fine portraitists of the 1920s and 1930s of the American realist school. Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
produced an example of a modern collegial portrait with his 1922 painting "All Friends Together".
A significant contribution to the development of portrait painting of 1930-2000 was made by Russian artists, mainly working in the traditions of realist and figurative painting. Among them should be called Isaak Brodsky
Isaak Brodsky
Isaak Izrailevich Brodsky , was a Soviet painter whose work provided a blueprint for the art movement of socialist realism. He is known for his iconic portrayals of Lenin and idealized, carefully crafted paintings dedicated to the events of the Russian Civil War and Bolshevik Revolution.Brodsky was...
, Nikolai Fechin, Abram Arkhipov
Abram Arkhipov
Abram Efimovich Arkhipov was a Russian realist artist, who was a member of the art collective The Wanderers as well as the Union of Russian Artists....
, Lev Russov
Lev Russov
Lev Alexandrovich Russov was a Soviet Russian painter, graphic artist, and sculptor, living and working in Leningrad, a member of the Leningrad branch of Union of Artists of Russian Federation, regarded as one of the leading representatives of the Leningrad school of painting, most famous for his...
, Engels Kozlov
Engels Kozlov
Engels Vasilievich Kozlov – Soviet Russian painter, People's Artist of Russia, lived and worked in Leningrad – Saint Petersburg, regarded as one of representatives of the Leningrad school of painting, most famous for his genre and portrait painting....
, and others.
Portrait production in Europe (excluding Russia) and the Americas generally declined in the 1940s and 1950s, a result of the increasing interest in abstraction and nonfigurative art. One exception, however, was Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Wyeth
Andrew Newell Wyeth was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century....
who developed into the leading American realist portrait painter. With Wyeth, realism, though overt, is secondary to the tonal qualities and mood of his paintings. 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. English artists such as Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...
(grandson of Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
) and Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
have produced powerful paintings. Bacon's portraits are notable for their nightmarish quality. In May 2008, Freud's 1995 portrait Benefits Supervisor Sleeping
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping
Benefits Supervisor Sleeping is a 1995 painting by Lucian Freud depicting an obese, naked woman. It is a portrait of Sue Tilley, weighted 127 kg, a Job Centre supervisor...
was sold by auction by Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...
in New York City for $33.6 million, setting a world record for sale value of a painting by a living artist. Many contemporary American artists, such as Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, Alex Katz
Alex Katz
Alex Katz is an American figurative artist associated with the Pop art movement. In particular, he is known for his paintings, sculptures, and prints and is represented by numerous galleries internationally.-Life and work:...
and Chuck Close
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close is an American painter and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits...
, have made the human face a focal point of their work. Warhol's painting of Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
is an iconic example. Close's specialty was huge, hyper-realistic wall-sized "head" portraits based on photographic images. Jamie Wyeth
Jamie Wyeth
James Browning Wyeth is a contemporary American realist painter. He was raised in Chadds Ford Township, Pennsylvania, son of Andrew Wyeth and grandson of N.C. Wyeth...
continues in the realist tradition of his father Andrew, producing famous portraits whose subjects range from Presidents to pigs.
See also
- Hierarchy of genresHierarchy of genresA hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value....
- The Portrait NowThe Portrait NowThe Portrait Now was a major international overview of contemporary portraiture held in 1993–1994 at the National Portrait Gallery in London. Among many others it included portraits by Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Tony Bevan, Chuck Close, Jim Dine, Peter Edwards, Stephen Finer,...