Well here we go, portraits. One of my favourite subjects for paintings in the work of others. I love the humorous and often wry series of self portraits by Rembrandt, the touching family paintings by Rubens. Others I enjoy are the wonderful bravura brushwork of Hals, Sargent or Zorn. The portrait is still with us the BP award happens every year, but most paintings have some stylish quirk that serves the painter rather than the subject, others are plainly from photos taken on a wide angle and too close, but the judges are too poorly educated in the nature of seeing to spot them, (I don’t give a damn about using a photo but use a good one for heavens sake.) in amongst all however there are some lovely things on show. Just one fine sincere painting in a show makes the whole thing worthwhile.
What is it this thing a portrait? There is a difference you see between a study and portrait, in a study you seek the form, but in the portrait you seek the person. Of all sorts of painting I think portraiture is the hardest, the most freighted with the possibility of failure. Skill and dexterity are all for naught if the feeling of a thinking being is absent. Indeed the more perfect your rendering the more lifeless it is likely to become. The paint must allow room for the moment to moment interpretation of the marks on offer, in a similar way as the perception of a real person is made up of quicksilver reinterpretations of the person before us. We may see perfection as say in a Vermeer portrait but look closely and you see softening of edges diminution of detail in the shadows etc that gives the space for mystery to breath.
No wonder the prospect of attempting such alchemy is an unsettling idea. Once started however I find them exhilarating and frustrating in equal degree. The tiniest alteration around the eyes can transform the result entirely, but perfect accurate copying of the same feature will lack life. The only way I ever get the result I seek is to paint and if failure results, scrape out or obliterate and start again, for freshness is of great importance it has to look as if it “just happened” as indeed people do. I’ll post a few below I’ve done over the years, some better than others my hit rate of even partial success is very low in this area I fear. Not that I need be shamed by that, a quick image Google for oil portrait brings up very few arresting images. Even if you discount the badly drawn the success rate is very low. Even Sir Peter Lely a hugely successful portraitist in his day painted very few mugshots worth a second glance. Frans Hals though the author of some of the most masterly examples of the genre is hugely variable in quality.
I am much attracted by the wizardry of Sargent, who has an almost pre-natural mastery of his medium, but such bravura work required him to paint every part in one wet into wet pass, so although it looks as if he dashed a portrait off in a moment of casual brilliance he actually often scraped out and repainted a head many times before being satisfied, with his work requiring many sittings. Though I love his sheer brilliance, it rarely digs deeper than the surface gloss and glow of a living thing. His wonderful landscapes and “holiday” paintings which, though many people don’t realise it, make up the bulk of his work are sadly barely known.
Rembrandt is another matter, he works over and over, building up the image with all the searching and seeking on display, he displays (especially in later life) little certainty, but a huge degree of sympathy which I feel elevates his portraits above any others I have seen.
Rubens too, his paintings and drawings of his wife and children are an incredible display of pride and tenderness.
Photographic portraits are now the norm but ones that catch a revealing moment are very few and far between and never I feel reach quite the heights that a painted work can do… but then I am biased.
You note I don’t put any illustrative images from the artists mentioned above. Well how could I? My poor offerings would be swamped and have no room to show whatever small charms they might possess in such company.
This is a painting from the late 80’s. It was done as a prop in a photograph and was my first attempt at a portrait other than drawings, it was later used as a book jacket. I remember struggling mightily to get it to work almost giving up in frustration a few times.
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A self portrait painted not long after in the early 90’s I would guess from the long locks. I painted three or four of these as I recall painting them one after the other spending about an hour on each, this is the best of the two survivors. It was an improvement I feel with lighter handling, but really only a sketch.
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This is the first portrait from life where I did drawings and photos in preparation. I had been struck by how beautiful my friend Jane looked with the light streaming through her window. Her flat was on the third floor and a large tree grew outside through which the light was filtered. Being very shy it took me some while to pluck up courage to ask her to pose.
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There is always one person willing to pose and that’s yourself. I only had a small shaving mirror which I perched on my easel next to my painting. I did several in a row with different expressions, this is one of the only ones that does not look like an entry into a gurning competition.
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Jane again, quite a few years on from the previous one, I fed her so much dinner she had to retire to the sofa. I was struck by the black of her clothes and the richness of the cushions against the blandness of the rest of the room. I don’t think it took more than an hour.
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My good friend Richard had just bought a new camera, and I took this snap while we were testing it. Afterwards I was struck by the composition and felt it would make a painting. I tried to focus the whole thing by controlling the handling of the paint from broad strokes to finer but retaining as free a quality of mark as I could manage.
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A final one I thought I should do another self portrait. It’s an odd thing but doing a self portrait is more like painting a stranger than a friend, also there is no pressure to flatter!
