Portrait painter

“ It has been as if a painter prepared himself to paint some portrait, but was so fascinated by the beauty of his model that he could not turn his eyes from her face to the canvas; only that the spectacles which have held me have not always been beautiful. ”

“ I am very glad of it, as it is a proof of some attention; but I hope you will be as good a portrait painter, which is a much more noble science. By portraits, you will easily judge, that I do not mean the outlines and the coloring of the human figure; but the inside of the heart and mind of man. ”

“ The good portrait painter always flatters; for it is his business, not, indeed, to alter and amend features, complexion, or mien, but to select and fix (which it demands genius and sense to do) the best appearance which these ever do wear. Happy the creature of sense and passion who has always with him that self which he could take pleasure in contemplating! ”

“ As the great portrait painter looks beyond the features of his sitter to give the mind and character of the man, often thereby laying himself open to complaint as to his mere likeness painting; so the great landscape painter will at all times sink individual imitation in seeking to fill us with the greater truths of his art. ”

“ I asked recently of a distinguished portrait-painter, "that you, who formerly have made successful efforts in several other branches of art, have at last confined yourself wholly to portrait-painting?" ”

“ The portrait-painter is, in this respect, much less liable than the historical painter, to deviate into the extremes of manner and affectation; for he cannot discard nature altogether, under the excuse that she only puts him out. ”

“ There have been portrait-painters who were greater painters, in the more limited sense of the word, than these two, and there has been at least one painter whose imaginative sympathy gave an inner life to his portraits absent from theirs, but in the essential qualities of portraiture, as distinguished from all other forms of art, perhaps no one else has quite equalled them. ”

“ Portrait-painting is the biography of the pencil, and he who gives most of the peculiarities and details, with most of the general character,—that is of keeping,—is the best biographer, and the best portrait-painter. ”

“ Let us suppose that a piece of pottery or porcelain has been painted, and that the action of the fire has made the coloring perennial, so that we find on it a portrait or a landscape everlasting as the ware itself. Let us suppose, further, that the tints are natural, that, in short, the portrait is all that we now understand by the word, and that in the landscape nature is displayed as on canvas—then we should have a specimen of the perfect union of the potter’s and painter’s art. ”

“ Portrait Painting.—A portrait painter in large practice might write a pretty book on the vanity and singularity of his sitters. A certain man came to Copely, and had himself, his wife and seven children all included in a family piece. "It was, but one thing." said he, "and that is the portrait of my first wife—for this one is my second." "But," said the artist, "she is dead you know sir; what can I do? she is only to be admitted as an angel." ”

“ Ask a portrait painter to describe his agonies in accommodating the faces with which nature and his sitters have crowded his painting-room to the principles of his art: with the exception of perhaps ten faces in as many millions, there is not one which he can venture to give without shading much and adding more. ”

“ The excellence of portrait-painting, and we may add even the likeness, the character, and countenance, as I have observed in another place, depend more upon the general effect produced by the painter, than on the exact expression of the peculiarities, or minute discrimination of the parts. The chief attention of the artist is therefore employed in planting the features in their proper places, which so much contributes to giving the effect and true impression of the whole. ”

“ For him, a portrait, even as a still-life piece or a landscape, is a piece of temperamental art, a problem in colour, so much so that he is unable to start upon his portrait, has no inclination to do so, before all the conditions of tonality in the face of his model and in the environment selected by him are such that they respond in a measure to the painter's own sense of colour. ”

“ Finally, observe the exquisite variety of all the touches which express fissure or shade; every one in varying directions and with new forms, and yet throughout indicating that perfect parallelism which at once explained to us the geology of the rock, and falling into one grand mass, treated with the same simplicity of light and shade which a great portrait painter adopts in treating the features of the human face; which, though each has its own separate chiaroscuro, never disturb the wholeness and grandeur of the head, considered as one ball or mass. ”

“ A portrait painter can represent his model in a common manner or with grandeur; in a common manner if he reproduce the merely accidental details with the same care as the essential features, if he neglect the great to carry out the minutiae curiously. He does it grandly if he know how to find out and place in relief what is most interesting, and distinguish the accidental from the necessary ”

“ It can hardly be [67] possible that, with the keen feeling every man must have in regard to his portrait, any one should fail to be more or less influenced by the painter’s conception of him, the visible embodiment of the impression he has made upon another human mind; and since every picture must contain something of the personality of the artist, it follows that a portrait-painter is sure to affect in some degree the character of his sitters. ”

“ Thus a portrait painter could make a fancy sketch of an imaginary [89] person, without any striking features, more easily than he could paint a particular man with all his peculiarities; as, for example, his bald head, high forehead, blue eyes, long aquiline nose, wide mouth, massive lower jaw and tall, slender body. The closer the resemblance, between the child and its parents, the greater the mystery. ”

“ While in the scale of the painter's art, portraiture ranks next to the higher branches of historical work, yet it is some distance behind them, for apart from the commonplace of scenic arrangement, the imagination of the portrait painter cannot be carried further than the consideration of added or eliminated details of form and expression in relation to a set subject. ”

“ So also portrait-painting was not thought of, unless it occurred in the likeness of a great man belonging to the time and place of the painter, who was the donor of some picture to chapel or monastery, or of the painter himself, alike introduced into sacred groups and scenes; for pictures were uniformly of a religious character, until a little later, when they merged into allegorical representations, just as one remembers that miracle plays passed into moral plays before ordinary human life was reproduced. ”

“ But the painter can depict the human body not merely as something sensuously beautiful, but as expressive, through gesture and pose and countenance, of character and thought. The complex psychic life of man is thus open to him for delineation. In the portrait, through the attentive study of the many varying expressions of the inner life, leading to the selection of some characteristic pose or action, the artist concentrates into a single image what seems to him to be the distinctive nature of the man. ”

“ Portrait-painting is good practice for a landscape painter, both because it forces him to treat a simple subject with close attention, and because it is the branch of art which has the most sound and definite technical traditions. ”

“ If a painter could be dispensed from making his works beautiful, every man might be an artist; for nothing is easier than to fashion ugliness, and brush and canvas would be as easy to handle as mortar and trowel.
Although portrait-painting is the most important branch of the art, it is to be noted that those who have succeeded in this line are very few. There are three kinds of portraits: ugly likenesses, perfect likenesses, and those which to a perfect likeness add an almost imperceptible character of beauty. ”

“ The group of mouldings cutting against the head in a portrait, or the lines of a column used to accentuate the curved forms of a face or 138figure, are well-known instances; and the portrait painter is always on the look out for an object in his background that will give him such straight lines. You may notice, too, how the lines drawn across a study in order to copy it (squaring it out, as it is called) improve the look of a drawing, giving a greater beauty to the variety of the curves by contrast with the variety lacking in straight lines. ”

“ The little man, with the cunning of his race, knew this peculiarity, and he also knew that ten chances to one the great painter would receive him with a frigid look, and perhaps bow him out of the door. So he had studied out and arranged a little game. Only the day before he had obtained an order for a portrait to be painted by the best man-painter of his time. ”

“ But as a portrait-painter, he took up the note struck by his master and continued it, leaving behind him a series of portraits which not only had their effect in determining the character of Court painting all over Europe, but, what is more to the point, a series of portraits most of which are works of art. As painting, it is true, they are hard, and often timid ”

“ But even the portrait-painter, a type of art in which the Ideal is less prominent than in many others, should at least flatter in this sense, that he is bound to treat with indifference all that is merely the external detail of form, texture, and colour, the mere adjuncts, that is to say, of physical life such as hairs, pores, scars, and other external accidents, in his undivided effort both to apprehend and deliver the subject selected in its universal character and permanent spiritual individuality. ”

“ It seems indeed to irradiate luminous color, and makes the picture brilliant in spite of its sombre accessories; and yet it leaves their full value to the tenderly glowing flesh portions. The portrait lacks a certain harmonious finish, that masterly interfusion of parts which the painter afterwards practised ”

“ The portrait waxes apace. Our host's daughter is in her very best looks. The painter's hand is inspired not merely by the love of art—great, though that love undoubtedly is with all artists—but spurred on by another, perhaps more powerful feeling, which lends such temper to our artist's ordinary faculties, as to render the painter himself, a rare occurrence, utterly amazed at his own powers. The first hour passes away like five minutes. Scarce a word has been spoken on either side. To those who feel they love, few words are necessary, and in many cases, perhaps the fewer the better. ”

“ As the portrait painter keeps an eye upon the king’s face and draws, and when the king’s face is towards him, attending to him at his painting, he draws the portrait easily and well, but when he turns his face away, he cannot draw, because the face is not gazing at the painter; in like manner Christ, the good artist, for those who believe Him and gaze continually at Him, straightway portrays after His own image a heavenly man. ”

“ To the man who has never held a paint brush as well as to the novice in art and the old experienced hand, there is a definite appeal. He shows one and all that his triumph as a portrait painter is not a mere affair of happy chance, but the logical outcome of certain principles followed without concession. ”

“ To such a pitch of interest has our story arrived. The painter, who paints a portrait, first makes separate outlines of the legs and other members, and finally connects them together and distinguishes the light from the shade. ”

“ But before we can appreciate all that the younger men were called upon to do, we must turn to the consideration of that most wonderful product of the Renaissance and of the painter's craft—the Portrait. ”

“ One might ask what would be the result if a painter were to attempt to convert a purely imaginative picture into a portrait, and, in addition to altering the face and the lines of the figures, were to put in a number of accessories to please the patron's taste, and also to accept suggestions from the sitter as to changes in the colour-scheme. ”

“ It is only the painter who possesses the intuitive faculty for seizing on the significant things in the form expression of his subject, of 244disentangling what is trivial from what is important; and who can convey this forcibly to the beholder on his canvas, more forcibly than a casual sight of the real person could do—it is only this painter who can hope to paint a really fine portrait. ”

“ Portraits Good Training.—I would not have you undertake to paint a portrait rashly. You should know what you are to expect. If you are not pretty sure of your drawing, and of the first principles of seeing color in nature, and of representing it on canvas, you are likely to get discouraged. Particularly if a friend poses for you, you may expect disappointment on both sides. Drawing a head from the life is a very different thing from drawing an inanimate object which will stay in one position as long as you can pay the rent. So in the painting of it, too, the color itself is alive. ”

“ There is, in short, composition, and we turn away refreshed. Not so much could be said of some of our popular portrait painters, whose hands are not outlined, but blurred, though dashing, and whose drawing is misty. ”

“ In the study search detail and modelling; in the sketch search relations and relief, effect and large accent.
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CHAPTER XXX PORTRAITS
Don't look upon portraits as something any one can do. A portrait is more than a likeness, and the painting of it gives scope for all of the great qualities possible in art. Only a great painter can paint a great portrait. Some great painters rest their fame on work in this field, and others have added by this to the fame derived from other kinds of work.
You must not think it easy to paint a portrait, or rest satisfied with having got a likeness. ”