Understanding and Reading
Portraiture
Introduction
• Portrait: A likeness or image of a person
that is created by an artist.
• Sitter (or patron in the context of a
portrait): The person or people who are in
a portrait.
• Symbol: Something representing
something else by association; objects,
characters, or other visual representations
of an abstract idea, concept, or event.
The Patron and the Painter
• The demand for portraits has been
widespread since the eighteenth century,
the time when Pompeo Batoni worked as
a portrait artist in Italy.
• Some people who became very wealthy
commissioned portraits which included
their grand newly built mansions, parks,
estates and families to show off their
wealth and importance.
• Likeness was all-important to most patrons; after
all, portraits were mainly a way of recording and
remembering the patron for posterity. For this
reason the wealthy nobility also commissioned
paintings of their houses and even their favourite
animals.
• Because the portraits were intended to make the
person seem very important it was also
necessary for the portraits to be flattering and
dignified.
• In early portraits, many patrons wanted to
include symbols of their profession or source of
their riches within the painting. For example, a
wealthy banker might like to be seen with a
ledger or sitting at his desk inside the bank
office.
• As the art of portraiture developed though, the
inclusion of other objects within the portrait
became more subtle, often suggesting a location
for the portrait which would frequently have been
made to record a special trip or tour.
the role of the artist and the
patron
• By 1780 portrait painting was big business across
Europe. There were over 100 portrait painters in London
alone. So, with all these painters competing for trade and
commissions, the patrons became increasingly powerful
and demanding and expected to be treated with
enormous respect by the artists.
• Most wealthy people went to the big cities to have their
portrait painted and anyone who wanted to appear
important needed a portrait of themselves as a status
symbol, in the same way as people show off their wealth
today through expensive possessions, cars, etc.
• Some portrait painters did stay in the
countryside, although they could not earn as
much and commissions were fewer, so most
tended to head for the city in the end.
• Even the beginning of photography in the mid
19th Century didn’t reduce the popularity of
portraiture. This was because portraits were
seen as status symbols in gilt frames, which
photos couldn’t imitate. However, the trade in
miniature portraits was killed by photography.
Van Dyck and C17th English
Portraiture
• Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641) was a very popular
portrait painter in England until his death in 1641. Van
Dyck and the other most popular portrait artists at the
time, were on an equal standing with their patrons and
could therefore make some of their own decisions about
the way the portrait was painted and also charged very
high prices for their work. These artists employed
‘drapery assistants’ to paint the costumes in the pictures,
while the main artist only really did the faces. In many
cases, the patron was asked to choose from a selection
of designs for the background, pose, costume etc. which
the assistant painters then reproduced once the face
was painted.
Hudson and C18th English
Portraiture
• Thomas Hudson (1701-1779) still worked in a
similar way to the earlier painters, with patrons
choosing from stock poses and often created
portraits of women with exactly the same
posture, clothes and jewellery in several different
portraits, with the only real difference being their
faces!
• Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792) was the last
English portrait painter to work in this way.
• Artists like Reynolds didn’t bother too
much about getting to know their patron
and just looked at their faces, working in a
very business-like way. The artists knew
exactly how long they needed the patron
to sit for their portrait, which was often as
little as 3 sittings of 2 hours each. This
reflects the industrial workman-like
approach to portraiture at the time.
• In contrast, by the end of the C19th, artists
such as Whistler would ask patrons to sit
up to 60 times for a single portrait,
demonstrating the level of involvement
and artistry artists evident by this time.
Artists by now wanted to really get to know
their patrons to convey their personality
through the painting.
The early C19th
• Around the end of the C18th, artists began
to move away from using assistants and
increasingly tended to complete the entire
painting themselves. This was because
portraits were beginning to be seen as
works of art in themselves and became
increasingly individual and less massproduced.
Clothing in Portraits
• In the C17th sitters were often painted in clothing which
was not their own, as they wanted to be portrayed as a
figure from myths and legends (this type of painting is
called allegorical). Reynolds took this idea a bit further,
by wrapping his sitters in silk gowns etc. to make them
look more wealthy and attractive – the artists would have
a stock of ‘dressing up’ clothes available in their studios.
• From the C19th onwards though, sitters were generally
portrayed in their own clothes. Sometimes the artist
would borrow the clothes from the sitter to finish off
working from after the sitter had left.
Artists as Salesmen
• Artists had to be good salesmen too, so
they made sure that the rooms in their
homes where they welcomed visitors
displayed some of their most impressive
paintings which they made deliberately to
advertise their skills. They also made
engravings (prints) of their best portraits
which could be reproduced and displayed
to again advertise their skills.
How to understand portraits
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Start by looking carefully. Try to consider all
these aspects:
What kind of pose is the sitter in?
What objects are there as well as the person in
the portrait?
Use as many adjectives as you can think of to
describe sitter.
What clothing is the sitter wearing and is it their
own?
What media was used to create the portrait –
why was that?
Is the portrait set indoors or outside? In the
artist’s studio or the sitter’s home/ Are they on
holiday?
• Once you’ve spent time looking and thinking, try
to work things out by analysing what you can
see and know:
• Who is the sitter – why might they have had this
portrait made?
• What do the objects tell us about the sitter?
• Who is the artist – what do you know about
him/her?
• When was the portrait created – what art
movements were happening at the time?
• What was going on in history when the portrait
was created?
Look at some Modern and Contemporary
examples of portraiture and compare them to
Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo examples –
what do you notice?
Some interesting artists to research include :
• Chris Ofili,
• Peter Blake (“Self-portrait with Badges”),
• Chuck Close,
• Jenny Saville
What does the pose and gesture convey and how
does portraiture differ from self-portraiture?