Portrait

“ It is as if the portrait itself were seeking to escape from life, retreating little by little, imperceptibly, into the dull shadows of the ground, so that only as you look at it from a certain angle can you still clearly distinguish the small dark eyes, the full moustache, the round chin, the square stocky shoulders of the subject. ”

“ Form with him was what it is with us,—a medium by which to communicate ideas, sensations, feelings; in short, the infinite poesy of being. Every figure is a world; a portrait, whose original stands forth like a sublime vision, colored with the rainbow tints of light, drawn by the monitions of an inward voice, laid bare by a divine finger which points to the past of its whole existence as the source of its given expression. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This portrait would be to him the most magical of mirrors. As it had revealed to him his own body, so it would reveal to him his own soul. ”

“ In America the work has been done with so coarse a hand that nothing is shown in the picture but the broad, plain, unspeaking outline of the face. As you look from the represented to the representation you cannot but acknowledge the likeness;—but there is in that portrait more of the body than of the mind. The true portrait should represent more than the body. ”

“ Then, happening to look at the portrait from a little distance, all the fine touches and tiny copied strokes blended into one, and he stood amazed by the thing that he had done—the portrait of a young, beautiful and wise—far too knowing!—young woman. ”

“ One day I was visiting a friend, when I was struck by the excellence of a portrait in his hall of a very refined and beautiful old lady; there was nothing characteristic in the dress. Being a fancier in portraiture, and being mightily ill-contented with modern portrait-painting, this picture pleased me especially; it was a picture as well as a portrait, harmonious in colour and tone, and artistically focussed. ”

“ Think of having your portrait painted first, the portrait of the ideal you by an artist, and then having a complaisant Creator fashioning your features into the nearest possible semblance of what you might wish to be! ”

“ That portrait, in common with most of those by the great masters in the art of portraiture, reveals to you, with an instantly recognised truthfulness, the interior and intrinsic nature of the man, with a luminousness which your own gaze on the living person would not achieve for you. ”

“ With extraordinary delicacy and reserve the artist has succeeded in making every line of this portrait—for a portrait it must be—express all the innocence and charm, all the passionate purity of youth. ”

“ Portrait painters now depend for their effect on the mere accidents of the entourage; on dress, on landscape, even on broad hints of a man's occupation, putting a plan on the engineer's table, and a roll in the statesman's hands, like the old Greek who wrote 'this is an ox' under his picture. ”

“ Often I have found the portrait superior in real instruction to half-a-dozen written biographies, or rather, I have found the portrait was as a small lighted candle, by which the biographies could for the first time be read, and some human interpretation be made of them. ”

“ In visiting some great picture gallery, and passing along amidst portraits innumerable of great men—of kings, statesmen, discoverers, authors or poets—I have sometimes been attracted above all by a portrait without a name, or without the interest attaching to it of any recorded great exploit, but which, nevertheless interests for its own sake. ”

“ I sing her portrait ... when flowers on meadows
Foreheads bow before going with a smile,
I sing her portrait ... when hair and garment
Wind preens a groves spring breath –
I sing her portrait .... ”

“ Who wants drawings from the antique, or the life class, or my unfinished love of a Psyche, or the interior of my room, or the portrait of Nikita, though it is better, to tell the truth, than the portraits by any of the fashionable artists? ”

“ But the portrait has its grand features for all that; features which give us a new conception of what exists in the universe and lure our thought afield in space with all the greater insistence for being drawn not from fancy but from fact. ”

“ For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich may be the background, in the first rough sketch of each portrait, yet with every added stroke of the brush, with every tiny readjustment of the "values," with every modification of the chiaroscuro, the eyes looking out at you grow more disquieting. ”

“ On the other hand, a portrait that is hardly recognizable by those who know best, and least, the person it purports to portray, may be in fact a true, a profound, a perfect likeness—a faithful reproduction of the face as a medium, with the mask discarded. ”

“ 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." ”

“ A portrait is apt, therefore, to be a surprise to us. The artist looks only from without. He sees us, too, with a hundred aspects on our faces we are never likely to see. No genuine expression can be studied by the subject of it in the looking-glass. ”

“ It lives its own surprise—it ceases to beat—and the void is inscrutable! In one grand and general view, who can display such a portrait? Fairly, however faintly, to delineate some of its features, is the sole and discriminate province of the pen which would trace nature, yet blot out personality. ”

“ Against this rather hazy, tempestuous background we have the sharply outlined portrait of an individual, a poet, containing a world within himself, a more radiant and orderly world than the one which his eyes look upon outwardly. ”

“ I and my friends have been wagering upon you, hoping for you, praying for you to win your race,—so that every one may admire you still more, and your name be flashed round the world quicker than the sunshine, and your portrait—in spite of you—appear in some French journal where they know how to engrave portraits properly. ”

“ The portrait of the young and beautiful enthusiast, simply yet most effectively painted by one who touches nothing which he does not adorn, could not have failed to excite our warmest sympathies; and we dwelt upon the pleasing yet melancholy theme with a lingering delight. ”

“ At that time the portrait, in colours, of the great man occupied the post of honour above the mantelpiece in our sala, or drawing-room— the picture of a man with fine clear-cut regular features, light reddish-brown hair and side-whiskers, and blue eyes ”

“ 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?" ”

“ And the portrait of my lady
⁠Wears the look it wore before.
Madam, see, my work is ended—”
⁠Sinks his voice, his face grows pale,
Twilight deepens into darkness
⁠While he falters through his tale. ”

“ Like composite photographs which give the appearance of a dozen people together, but a recognisable portrait of none, the multitude offers as it were a likeness in the rough, without precision of detail yet with certain marked features more obviously indicated. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation. ”

“ Now, that is childish.”
“Harry,” said Basil Hallward, looking him straight in the face, “every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. ”

“ Therefore as portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of the face, in which the character is seen, than in the other parts of the body, so I must be allowed to give my more particular attention to the marks and indications of the souls of men, in my portrayal of their lives. ”

“ My portrait would remind you, my indulgent reader, of that mysterious peculiarity of artists, according to which they very often transmit their own feelings, even their external features, to the subject upon which they are working. ”

“ The portrait of a type must be the presentment of an abstract personality—a print, as it were, from a composite negative comprising the likenesses of many individuals, so welded together as to reproduce only that which is common to all: a collective portrait which is like all but resembles none. ”

“ To look on something besides—a portrait that hung upon the wall, underneath her own. It was a small thing—a mere photographic carte-de-visite. But it was the likeness of one who had a large place in her brother’s heart, if not in her own. ”

“ It is quite true that to draw a portrait was the aim of the very earliest of draughtsmen, whether it was that of his companion or of one of the beasts of chase, and whether he carved it on a bone, or daubed it on the wall of his dwelling. ”

“ Other traits, however, must be added to complete the portrait—prodigious power of will, indomitable perseverance, hatred of inefficiency and pretence, active and disinterested kindness, impetuosity held in check by circumspect sagacity. ”