#portrait
Art the community tagged “portrait” — see what people make of it.
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Based on a post by Erisava
Portrait of Sebastián de Morra by Diego Velázquez, 1644
He served at the Spanish court for years after being brought there as an adult — apparently somewhere between an entertainer and a companion, depending who you ask.
tbear: Can’t say I’ve seen this pose for a portrait before.
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Based on a post by Erisava
Mezzetin by Jean-Antoine Watteau, 1717
Mezzetino was a stock character in the old Italian travelling comedies — a servant type, always in love with someone who isn't having it. From what I can find, this sat in the collection of a friend who had prints made of everything, and a few decades later it was bought up for the Empress of Russia's palace.
Roya: Does he look drunk to you too?
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Woman with a hat by Henri Matisse, 1905
This showed at a Paris salon alongside a handful of painters using color this wild — critics apparently called them 'the wild beasts,' and the nickname (Fauves) stuck.
Erisava: Does this still work as a portrait, or is it just wild color?
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Mäda Primavesi (1903–2000) by Gustav Klimt, 1912
This was a commission — her parents were rich Viennese patrons who put money behind a lot of the design world there. The story goes she was nine, and that she picked how she wanted to stand herself.
Erisava: I love the colors but there is something unsettling in the child's look.
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Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear by Vincent van Gogh, 1889
Supposedly he painted this right after leaving hospital — the print behind him nods to the Japanese woodblocks he collected.
Erisava: That green coat is the deepest color in the whole thing, but his stare is what stops you.
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Nude on a Blue Cushion by Amedeo Modigliani, 1917
This was one of a run of nudes his dealer had him churn out fast to sell — and when they went on show in Paris, police shut the exhibition down on opening day for indecency.
Erisava: Why's her head so small for the rest of her?
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American Gothic by Grant Wood, 1930
The models were apparently his sister and his dentist, and it supposedly won him $300 and instant fame overnight. People still argue about whether he was making fun of farm folk or standing up for them — he insisted it was the second.
Erisava: They look like they just caught me doing something wrong.
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Family Group by William James Glackens, 1910
Apparently that's his own family and friends in their own sitting room. Painting your relatives is cheaper than hiring models — though from the faces, the sitting went on a while.
Erisava: Nobody in this room looks like they want to be there.
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Honoré de Balzac by Auguste Rodin, 1891
A study head, apparently — one of a pile made while wrestling with a monument to a writer who'd been dead about forty years. The research went deep: reading the novels, chasing down the tailor's old measurements, hunting for men from the same region who might resemble him. When the finished monument was finally unveiled, the society that had ordered and paid for it refused to take it.
Erisava: Is this finished, or did it just get a plinth anyway?
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George W. Vanderbilt by James McNeill Whistler, 1900
From what I've read, he was still working on this when he died, so it was never actually finished — which might explain a few things, or might not.
Erisava: Looks like an old days school teacher, with the cane.
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Madame Arthur Fontaine in a Pink Shawl by Édouard Vuillard, 1904
The woman in the chair was a pianist who ran with a crowd of painters, writers and musicians. Apparently he painted her many times and the two stayed close friends for years, even after her marriage ended.
Erisava: The carpet's so loud I nearly missed the person sitting in it.
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Mezzetin by Jean-Antoine Watteau, 1717
Mezzetino was a stock character in the old Italian travelling comedies — a servant type, always in love with someone who isn't having it. From what I can find, this sat in the collection of a friend who had prints made of everything, and a few decades later it was bought up for the Empress of Russia's palace.
Erisava: Is this meant to be funny, or am I laughing at the wrong thing?
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Portrait of Giacomo di Andrea Dolfin by Titian, 1531
For a long time this was just filed as 'Portrait of a Man' — someone eventually managed to make out the barely-legible letter he's holding, addressed to himself, and that's apparently how they worked out who he was.
Erisava: He's dressed like he wants you to notice the money before the face.
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Seated Woman by Chaïm Soutine, 1923
Apparently he painted this same setup - seated, facing forward, hands folded - close to 200 times, and barely ever named who he was painting. Supposedly one of the other versions is so similar it's been mistaken for the same sitter.
Erisava: Why does the color feel off, and why do the hands look so huge?
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Farmer from Laren, North Holland by Martinus van Regteren Altena, 1902
The village in the title had turned into an artists' colony by then — painters moving out to a farming place on the heath specifically to paint the people already living there. From what I read, whole careers got built on that arrangement. The farmers mostly stayed farmers.
Erisava: So real and in your face. Do you think he wanted this painted though?
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Saint Jerome Writing by Caravaggio, 1607
He made this in Malta while trying to get himself accepted as a Knight of St John — he'd run from Rome after killing a man and badly needed protection. It worked for about a year before they threw him out again. The small coat of arms tucked in the corner belongs to the knight who paid for it, according to Wikipedia.
Erisava: Is all that black doing something, or is it just a way to paint less?
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Portrait of a Young Woman by Sandro Botticelli, 1485
I couldn't dig up much on this one — no name for her, nothing about why it was painted. If anyone knows, I'd take the story.
Erisava: Is this the whole painting or a detail? Either way it works fine.
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Amédée-David, the Comte de Pastoret by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1823
The man in it was a rich young aristocrat with a habit of ordering paintings of himself — this was one of several he commissioned from the same painter, going by the museum's own notes. His father, I gather, had been a heavyweight in French law and politics, so the family was well used to being looked at.
Erisava: He paid someone to make him look this pleased with himself.
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Girl with a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, 1665
According to what I've read, nobody's ever identified who she actually was — this is what's called a 'tronie,' a study of a face or expression rather than a portrait of a real sitter. There's apparently ongoing debate over whether that earring is even a real pearl, since a stone that size would've cost a fortune at the time.
Erisava: Is she about to say something, or has she just been caught looking over?
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The Jewish Bride by Rembrandt, 1667
Nobody's actually sure who these two are, or which couple from the Old Testament they're dressed up as — the title only got attached by a dealer a couple of hundred years later and stuck. Van Gogh supposedly said he'd give ten years of his life to sit in front of it for a fortnight with nothing but a dry crust to eat.
Erisava: The gold on his sleeve is laid on so thick it barely looks painted.