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:

Cashing in on George

wikipedia.org

This 1772 painting of George Washington is the first portrait of him painted from life, and depicts him in his uniform as a colonel of the Virginia Regiment, from the French and Indian War. It was actually painted 12 years after the war by Charles Wilson Peale (1741-1827), a friend who had served with Washington.

fineart-china.com

While most of us automatically think of Gilbert Stuart when we think of Washington's portraits, Charles Wilson Peale actually painted seven life portraits of the President, more than any other artist. As I mentioned in my posting, George Washington's Left Eye, life portraits of Washington were a goldmine for artists of the new republic because they served as templates from which many lucrative copies could be made. 

artfinder.com

And so Peale painted dozens of Washington portraits. The most successful depicted Washington at the Battle of Princeton. The first version was finished in 1779, and 18 copies were made of it, including one for King Louis XVI of France.

senate.gov  |  wikipedia.org  |  wikipedia.org  |  wordpress.com

Here, I've cropped four versions so that the faces can be better seen. I'm guessing that Peale had a replica of Washington's uniform and posed models in it, then simply superimposed the same head, painting after painting.

Peale had 16 children and three of his sons — Raphaelle, Rembrandt and Rubens — were also gifted artists. A fourth, Titian Peale, was both an artist and a pioneer in photography.

In 1795, George Washington agreed to sit one last time for Charles Wilson Peale. Peale painted Washington, but he had actually arranged the sitting so that 17-year-old Rembrandt could also paint the elderly President, thereby assuring a lifetime of commissions for Rembrandt. Below is the 17-year-old's first portrait of Washington.

click to enlarge  |  fineartamerica.com

His father did indeed insure a lifetime of work, and Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860) went on to paint Washington for years. Rembrandt Peale's most popular portrait is the polished Patriæ Pater, shown below (I wish I could find a larger example of it!).

flagsbay.com

I think the most successful portrait of Washington (by anyone) is the Rembrandt Peale version that has hung in the Oval Office through many administrations.

wikipedia.org  |  donkeylicious.com

You can see that aside from the uniform, it is a nearly identical to Patriæ Pater.

wikipedia.org

fineartsamerica.com  |  Mathew Brady: Historian with a Camera

Above left is a self-portrait of Rembrandt Peale and on the right is a daguerreotype portrait of him by Mathew Brady. By the time Rembrandt Peale sat for Brady, he was in his last years, and the only remaining artist who had painted Washington from life.

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