Portrait painting

“ 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. ”

“ And why I have not before now finished the miniature I promised to Mrs. Butts? I answer I have not, till now, in any degree pleased myself, and now I must entreat you to excuse faults, for portrait-painting is the direct contrary to designing and historical painting, in every respect. If you have not nature before you for every touch, you cannot paint portrait; and if you have nature before you at all, you cannot paint history. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ If I paint them under these artificial circumstances, I fail, of course, to present them in their habitual aspect; and my portrait, as a necessary consequence, disappoints everybody, the sitter always included. When we wish to judge of a man’s character by his handwriting, we want his customary scrawl dashed off with his common workaday pen, not his best small text traced laboriously with the finest procurable crow-quill point. So it is with portrait-painting, which is, after all, nothing but a right reading of the externals of character recognisably presented to the view of others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; ”

“ We have much excellent portrait sculpture; but portrait sculpture, which is nothing more, is always third-rate work, even when produced by men of genius;—nor does it in the least require men of genius to produce it. To paint a portrait, indeed, implies the very highest gifts of painting; but any man, of ordinary patience and artistic feeling, can carve a satisfactory bust. ”

“ On that broad basis, portrait takes its exalted place between history and the drama. The portrait I mean is that common one as widely spread as confined in its principle; the remembrancer of insignificance, mere human resemblance, in attitude without action, features without meaning, dress without drapery, and situation without propriety. The aim of the artist and the sitter’s wish are confined to external likeness ”

“ Inasmuch, moreover, as the art of painting, to the fullest extent among the plastic arts, acknowledges the claim of the specific form, and the individualized characterization to assert itself, so above all we find here the transition to real portraiture. We should be therefore wholly in the wrong if we condemned portrait painting as incompatible with the lofty aims of art. ”

“ Every artist must have remarked how often that lightness of hand which was in his dead-colour (or first painting) escaped in the finishing when he had determined the parts with more precision; and another loss which he often experiences, which is of greater consequence: while he is employed in the detail, the effect of the whole together is either forgotten or neglected. The likeness of a portrait, as I have formerly observed, consists more in preserving the general effect of the countenance than in the most minute finishing of the features or any of the particular parts. ”

“ Think of the years of study, toil, practice, discouragements it takes to make an artist capable of painting an acceptable portrait, not only a resemblance to the person, but to portray the character, to catch the spirit, and even the charm, if the artist be so highly gifted. ”

“ Again, one may paint for years without the slightest [Pg 31] knowledge of, or taste for true art. In painting a portrait, something more is required than the mere likeness, something besides pink and white prettiness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am deeply concerned for the future condition of portrait-painting. It is not, as you may imagine, with any distrust whatever of those distinguished men who take a part in that branch of art; it is much more for the subjects that I am concerned. ”

“ In fact,’ said Miss La Creevy, sinking her voice to a confidential whisper, ‘there are only two styles of portrait painting; ”

“ Between the mere portrait and the portrait that possesses some of the universal qualities of a work of art the interval is wide, and almost one of kind rather than degree, though no line of strict demarcation can be drawn; while, as between the painting that is primarily a portrait, with incidental universal qualities, and a painting that is primarily a work of art, and incidentally a portrait, the difference is entirely a matter of degree. ”

“ I cannot avoid mentioning here a circumstance in{73} portrait-painting, which may help to confirm what has been said. When a portrait is painted in the historical style, as it is neither an exact minute representation of an individual, nor completely ideal, every circumstance ought to correspond to this mixture. The simplicity of the antique air and attitude, however much to be admired, is ridiculous when joined to a figure in a modern dress. ”

“ It should be noticed that the first growth of portrait painting in Western Europe seems to have arisen out of this custom of introducing portrait figures of patrons and donors at the beginning of important manuscripts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In this practical treatise for the student and professional painter, the subject is treated from a threefold point of view: The historical, The aims and methods of the great masters, and The practice of portrait painting. The illustrations 64include forty or more portraits painstakingly reproduced from some of the world’s best work.
“No man of our day could write of his subjects more agreeably, sanely, or with more intimate knowledge, nor produce a volume so likely to gain the attention of the general public.” ”

“ In the study search detail and modelling; in the sketch search relations and relief, effect and large accent.
[Pg 286]
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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ They contain an account of the face, figure, dress, voice, and manner of our best-known writers ranging from Geoffrey Chaucer to Mrs. Henry Wood,—drawn in all cases when it is possible by their contemporaries, and when through lack of material this endeavour has failed, the task of portrait-painting has devolved either on other writers who owed their inspiration to the offices of a mutual friend, or on those whose literary ability and untiring research have qualified them for the task. ”

“ We may take it, then, that these painters were still connected by a fine thread with the landscape-painters of the seventeenth century. On the other hand, so great were the demands of decoration-painting upon their strength and energy, that they had sunk remarkably low in the matter of portrait-painting. And yet portraits were asked for not only by the princes and the aristocracy, but also by the well-to-do middle class. The tapestry-painters produced a number of small family-portraits, mostly naive and weak, although occasionally distinguished by a certain delicacy of conception. ”

“ In design the portrait is strangely like a Romney; it is full of all that brightness and grace, and that feminine refinement, which is a distinguishing characteristic of his genius, and which was especially impressed on my memory by the portrait of the lady in the white dress walking forward, her hands in front of her, the slight fingers pressed one against the other, exhibited this year in the exhibition of Old Masters in the Academy. ”

“ It appears to me that a life-size portrait should be treated in the same way. Viewed from the end of the gallery, it should resemble the person it represents, and the likeness should become more and more striking the nearer we approach, until we get within a very short distance. ”

“ All his pictures are realistic, and many of them are fantastic; he gave graceful movement and beauty of form to many of his subjects; his drapery was well arranged; his color and manner of painting were good. He painted in fresco and oil colors, executed miniatures and engravings. His portraits were his best works, and in them he equalled the greatest masters. The most reliable portrait of this artist is in the Basle Museum. It is done in red and black chalk, and represents him as a man with regular, well-shaped features, with a cheerful expression which also shows decision of character. ”

“ She is evidently painting her own portrait, for which purpose she uses the mirror which hangs over the colour-box. It is rather curious that the tools which lie by the side of the grinding-stone are those of a sculptor, and not those of a painter, so that it was no doubt intended we should suppose that she combined the two branches of the art. In one of the illuminations of the manuscript of the “Romance of the Rose,” which has been quoted before, preserved in the British Museum, we have a picture of a male painter, copied in our cut No. ”

“ We maintain, therefore, that the first essential, the life and soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot; and that the Characters come second--compare the parallel in painting, where the most beautiful colours laid on without order will not give one the same pleasure as a simple black-and-white sketch of a portrait. ”

“ The portrait painter makes us feel all this in his picture. The attitude is so dignified, the gesture so forcible, the countenance so expressive, that we are impressed at once with the dignity of his character. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”