10 Noteworthy Portraits of Men

My blogging friend Yvette of In So Many Words recently posted on 10 male portraits she'd like to own, and now it's my turn. Actually, the following aren't necessarily all-time favorites, but I like to study each of them for one reason or another. I'll share them with you in the order they were created:

Holbein   |   Phaidon

This is a detail of Hans Holbein's famous painting, The Ambassadors, painted in 1533. Here is the French ambassador to the court of King Henry VIII, Jean de Dinteville. Holbein was famous for painting very truthful portraits, so much so that he was sent to paint the king's prospective brides (Henry was nonetheless surprised upon meeting Anne of Cleves!).

There is a tremendous sensuousness to Holbein's portraits, and I believe that's due in part to the exquisite and sensitive modeling of lips and eyes. Look at a hundred portraits throughout the history of painting, and you'll be hard-pressed to find eyelids — yes, eyelids — painted with such definition.

wikimedia.org

By contrast, Rembrandt Peale obscured his brother Rubens' eyes in this 1801 portrait, and that only adds in conveying the brother's personality. The reflections from the glasses are a wonderful touch, and the depiction of the geranium is worthy of the best botanical painting. Rembrandt Peale painted this when he was 23 years old.

Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean-Léon Gérôme painted Bashi-Bazouk in Paris, in 1869. In his own time, Gérôme was well known for his exotic paintings of the Near East, and he returned from an expedition there with many costumes and props. I've found another painting with the same headdress at artsunlight.com. (Both sitters are models.)

artsunlight.com

While the painting on the right is a handsome piece, it's interesting to see how much stronger and more effective the painting on the left is — it's a far better painting in terms of composition, color, lighting, even the pose and attitude of the sitter.

fineartamerica.com

One of the best White House portraits is this 1919 sketch of President Woodrow Wilson by the British artist Sir William Orpen. This was done at the same time that Orpen documented the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, probably his most famous painting. I've seen Orpen's work in person, and looking at reproductions doesn't do justice to his rich brushwork.

Speaking of White House portraits,  I've been disappointed with the more recent ones, which are formulaic, predictable and dull. Their backgrounds are usually unimaginative White House backdrops.

americangallery.wordpress.com

And that's why I like this portrait, not of a president, but of an Iowa pioneer named John B. Turner. Grant Wood painted this in 1929. He took an elderly gentleman whose fame probably never extended far beyond Rotary Club meetings, and placed a distinctive antique map of Iowa behind him. Suddenly there's an extra depth to the sitter's countenance, and we wonder, just what did Mr. Turner do? This portrait was one of the first paintings to gain attention for Grant Wood.

pdfcast.net

I mentioned Pietro Annigoni in my presentation of 10 noteworthy paintings of women. He painted this image of Conti Giancarlo Bossi Pucci c. 1950. I love this painting's golden glow, and again, the unique background. It's an interesting composition — note how the opening in the ceiling complements, mirrors and accentuates the forehead.

artoftheprint.com

I'm not limiting this selection to paintings. I've always admired the very distinctive wood engravings of Leonard Baskin (1922-2000). He cut this portrait of Gustave Courbet in 1969. It was one of a series of portraits he did of 19th-century painters.

aotw.com

This young Sioux was painted by James Bama in 1988 or before. Bama started as a commercial artist and then had a second career solely devoted to Native Americans and cowboys of the American West.

tfaoi.com

I discovered Will Wilson rather recently, and I particularly enjoy this self-portrait, which he did in 2005. It reminds me of that classic self-portrait of the young Parmigiano, which was also painted as a trompe l'oeil convex mirror.

galeriemax.com

My final choice is this self-portrait by Chuck Close, done in 2012. I love the fact that Close establishes such a tight grid, and then breaks out of it. I also appreciate how Close's unique style has evolved in a very natural progression:

10 Noteworthy Portraits of Women

My blogging friend Yvette of In So Many Words recently posted on 10 female portraits she'd love to own. I don't have enough wall space for 10 more portraits, but I thought today I'd share 10 portraits of women that I enjoy studying (the portraits, I mean!). We'll look at them in the order they were painted.

topofart.com

This is a portrait of Giovanna Tornabuoni, painted by Ghirlandaio in 1488. Giovanna was a young noblewoman who died in childbirth that same year. The painting is rich in detail, and yet has a flatness that appeals to me for its very graphic quality. The beautifully modeled face contrasts with straight lines and simple shapes that could make a cubist's heart skip a couple of beats. I view this as a very modern painting, along the line of an early work by David Hockney.

en.wikipedia.org

Leonardo da Vinci painted Cecilia Gallerani circa 1490, about two years after Ghirlandaio's portrait of Giovanna. Cecilia was the 16-year-old mistress of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza, for whom Leonardo produced many designs ranging from battlements to party decorations. The ermine is most certainly symbolic — as well as representing purity, it was the Duke's heraldic animal. I like this portrait for that graceful hand, and it's interesting that Leonardo mirrored the ermine's paw with equal grace. Few people have painted more beautiful hands than da Vinci, though, as one looks more closely at the painting, it really isn't the hand of a 16-year-old!

nga.gov

Lady With a Red Hat was painted by Johannes Vermeer in 1666, and came to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through the collection of Andrew Mellon. I have a hunch that Vermeer was an alien time-traveler who ended up in the Netherlands with a knowledge of light from beyond our own time. His incredible highlights and diffused edges suggest that he studied optics and perhaps even used optic devices to which his contemporaries were not privy.

painting-palace.com

Here's a portrait of Mrs. Ezekiel Goldthwait (Elizabeth Lewis), painted by John Singleton Copley in 1771. This painting has special meaning for me because as a young artist I came to the realization, through copying it, that colors always appear more vibrant when they are juxtaposed with dark neutrals. Copley's finest portraits consistently feature bright spots that leap out of very muted palettes.

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

As I look back over the portraits included so far, I notice a lot of fine fabrics. What can I say — I like luxe! And few excelled at that as well as Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, who painted this portrait of Princess de Broglie in 1853. Ingres' detailed rendering of satins, paisleys and jewelry made him popular in the French court, and yet he regarded portraits as the lesser of his work. Compare this image with the one of Mrs. Goldthwait, and you see that both artists rendered luxury in the bottom half of the painting and then reserved the top half for the face to pop out of simplicity. In each case, the painting is divided almost exactly in half.

sightswithin.com

By contrast, Franz Xaver Winterhalter's 1859 portrait of Countess Lamsdorff is busy-ness through and through. And yet, we are drawn — despite all the detail — to the sitter's face. How does that happen?

First, Winterhalter paints many lines in both the dress and the natural elements that converge on the face. And if that were not enough, he creates a spiral of movement around the face, sort of a visual vortex.

See how the shadow around the bottom of the dress forms an arc that moves up into the tree and around the head? Brilliant!

bob520.wordpress.com

Alphonse Mucha painted Zodiac in 1896. His compositions are interesting because he used layers of decorative detail to form essentially solid blocks of color. Lush background detail is outlined in lighter colors or thinner lines, while the portrait itself gets a heavy black outline. But even here, that outline modulates to lightness as it moves down the neck and into the neckline. Isn't it interesting to see the different ways that artists simultaneously lavish and curb detail?

click to enlarge  |  wikipaintings.org

Carl Larsson's 1906 portrait of his wife Karin is interesting in that the center of the composition is her azalea. Looking at Larsson's work, one can appreciate what a natural drawer and superb draftsman he was. It seems to me as though he must neither have used an eraser nor ever blotted a line.

Pinterest  |  Robert Sobsey

Tamara de Lempicka is one of my favorite artists — I've linked to her biography because it's such interesting reading. I've always been intrigued (and a little jealous) of artists who attain such a recognizably distinct style. This is a 1928 portrait of Arlette Boucard, daughter of Dr. Pierre Boucard, also painted by Lempicka (and an interesting story in itself). Tamara de Lempicka's work is sometimes described as "soft cubism," and I'd be hard-pressed to name anyone who surpasses in that genre. It's as though Ingres meets Leger in the form of one person.

artandopinion.tumbler.com

My final choice for this posting is this stunning portrait by Pietro Annigoni (1910 – 1988). I'm sorry to say that I can't identify the sitter — perhaps a reader can help me fill in the blank. Annigoni was highly influenced by the Italian Renaissance, and his paintings seem more a continuation of that period rather than a reinterpretation. His work often reminds me of Hans Holbein, and so it seems fitting that Annigoni was made famous worldwide by his 1956 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II.

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