....................About Portraits

When commissioning a portrait there are a couple of things to consider. The basic reason for having a portrait made is to honor someone in the most dignified fashion you can. You are deciding on one of the most beautiful time honored mediums, a true oil painting.

Beware of slick photographic copies. The portrait should have a painterly quality and not mimicking a photo. It is no compliment to an artist to tell him that his painting is almost like a photo. Why should an artist go through the trouble of copying a photograph in oil. Better put a frame around the original photo and keep it that way.

A good painting is more the result of the artist's technique and virtuosity and his way of grasping the sitter's personality than the dexterity in obtaining a perfect photographic effect. The sitter is obviously changing day by day, getting more mature or older, and after a certain period of time the likeness to the sitter can only be assumed. Favorable gestures were added and small imperfections removed. Only when the artist is capable of capturing the true personality of the sitter, the composition is pleasing and the painting is well executed, we will really have honored the sitter in his own time frame and represented in a dignified fashion for posterity.
Every artist has his own vision and techniques to obtain this goal. This is why we know most of the museum portraits more by the name of the painter and rarely by that of the sitter. The portraits are Rembrandt's, vanDyck's, Velasquez's, etc.

Should a good portrait painting be executed directly from the sitter?
Some portraits were painted directly from the sitter, however, most are not. The great masters of the past made several sketches from the sitter and created their masterpieces with the help of these sketches and mannequins draped with original clothes of the sitter and even models were hired to sit for the painter. This was an intelligent approach to a common problem. The person to be portrayed did not have the time to sit for hours or weeks, even months and in the case of Ingress up to eight years. They most probably lacked the patience and wouldn't make very good models after all. The same practical problems exist today. A painting of one of the kings of England was done by a french artist who never left France and never saw the monarch. He got reference sketches done by other artists together with a coin showing the king's effigy. He produced however a masterpiece.

All of world's most famous painters of the past would have loved to embrace modern technology and use photographs as reference. Not to copy slavishly but to use them as a creative tool. The impressionists used photographs to great advantage without any trace of intent to produce a photographic quality.