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Portraits and Portrait Painting Louvre. Parisj [Leonardo da Vinci PORTRAIT OF MONA LISA (See page 30) Portraits and Portrait Painting Being a Brief ^urbeg of Portrait fainting from tfje j&ittole &0/S to tfje Present BY Estelle M. Hurll AUTHOR OF " THE MADONNA IN ART," " CHILD LIFE IN ART," "THE BIBLE BEAUTIFUL," ETC. BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY MDCCCCVII Copyright, 1907 BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY (INCORPORATED) All rights reserved First impression, September, 1907 COLONIAL PRESS Electrotyfied and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. Boston, U.S.A. J3Brarj N 7577 B. preface THE purpose of this book is so plain as to need no explanation: it is a brief survey of portrait painting from the Middle Ages to the present day, showing what has been con- tributed to the art by each age and by each nationality, as well as by the several most notable portrait painters. Something, too, is told of the people who were the subjects of famous portraits. Among the illustrations the reader will find some familiar favourites, and also some interesting pictures which have never before been reproduced. ESTELLE M. HURLL. NEW BEDFORD, MAS. July, 1907 INTRODUCTORY ABOUT POETBAIT PAINTING THERE are, no doubt, a great many people who do not care for portraits, even people who are otherwise fond of pictures. What we call a good story picture is always sure to be popular, but it requires some effort to be- come interested in a portrait: it does not appeal so directly to the imagination. There is, indeed, much the same difference between a portrait and a story picture, that there is between a biography and a novel. One has to do chiefly with character, and the other with action. The biography is popularly regarded as dull reading, while the novel has wide circulation. Now and again, how- ever, a biography is written, so full of dra- matic incident and so skilfully related, that it, compels an interest beyond the most fasci- nating novel. So, too, here and there, a por- trait has been painted in so masterly a way vi INTRODUCTORY that it tells a story more interesting than an actual illustration the story of an individ- ual life. If we know who the sitter was, and something of his life, so much the better. " " But even the portrait of an unknown may be so charged with meaning that it will ex- ercise a complete fascination for us. The great portrait master writes the story so plainly in the face that the picture needs no label. So Titian's Man with the Glove, Rembrandt's nameless gentleman of the Metropolitan Museum, Velasquez's Lady with the Fan, appeal to us more powerfully than many of the identified portraits by the same masters. A The first quality of great portraiture, then, is the power to reveal the inner char- acter, or story, of the sitter. It is said that every man habitually wears a mask in the presence of his fellows, and it is only in mo- ments of unconsciousness that he drops it. The great portrait painter must be able to discern and seize the true self, revealed in instantaneous flashes, and then veiled. Such an artist, INTRODUCTORY vii " Poring on a face, Divinely through all hindrance finds the man Behind it, and so paints him that his face, The shape and colour of a mind and life, Lives for his children, ever at his best." l Interpretative portrait painting first found striking exemplification in Leonardo da Vinci, and reached a superlative degree in the Venetian Lotto. Probably every portrait painter since, however far from attaining his ideal, has set himself more or less definitely to this aim. To attain it requires something of the seer as well as the artist, and a sensitive and sympathetic nature as well. A painter's gift in interpreting life is great in proportion to the scope of his sympathies. Whistler's power was remarkable in his own circle, but his radius was short, while Hals and Velasquez were men of universal sympathies. Often the personality of the sitter is revealed by his direct gaze which seems to take us into his confidence. Smiling or grave, his eyes " " seem to draw us with a sense of intimacy which is difficult to define. We get this qual- l The lines in Elaine in which Tennyson embodied the ideas expressed to him by Watts on the work of a portrait painter. viii INTRODUCTORY ity in the jovial camaraderie of Hals, the friendly smile of Reynolds, the wistful stare of Rembrandt, and the melancholy appeal of Morone. At other times the sitter's glance is averted, and he is quite unaware of obser- vation. We have surprised him with his expression off guard, in the intimacy of his own self-communion. So Titian often treated his portrait subjects. r^ Obviously the noblest form of character revelation is idealization. When the painter can show what a man's soul is capable of attaining, he fulfils the highest function of his art. This was the special glory of Titian and Van Dyck, and not infrequently Reyn- olds and Gainsborough touched this mark. In our day no one has done so much in this way as George Frederick Watts. - Combined with psychological insight is a econd equally important quality of the por- rait painter, the power to give lifelikeness o a sitter. In the great portrait the blood eems fairly coursing through the veins. We eem to be looking at a breathing human eing, not a picture; we have the sense of a INTRODUCTORY ix real This is what we call presence.""^ vitality. It has to do with the physical, as the other has to do with the psychical. Vitality does not, however, require motion or even excessive animation. In the early military groups by Frans Hals the figures are so alive that they almost walk out of their frames. The quality is not sufficiently restrained; the sitters do not properly keep their place. It is possible to produce an effect of perfect lifelikeness in repose, as Velasquez did in his incomparable portraits of Philip IV. To what degree the likeness should be counted an essential of portrait painting is a matter of varying opinion. As the original purpose of portraiture, in fact, the raison d'etre, it has always been an ostensible, if not a real object of the painter. In the begin- nings of the art there was so little skill that the sitter and his friends were easily satisfied. It was half the battle to copy the costume accurately. If the leading peculiarities of the features were suggested, the resemblance was considered a marvel. With the advancement"! of technique a more photographic accuracy I x INTRODUCTORY was expected, such as we have in Ghirlandajo and the Van Eycks. It was a still later development of the art to adapt the portrait to purely artistic ends, to make it first of all a picture.J This was the primary aim of the Venetians, with whom decorative ensemble was of supreme interest. With such a point of view the resemblance was often neglected. * As a critic has wittily remarked, Titian, Rembrandt and Rubens often executed a fantasia on the motif of the person painted. ... It was in the cause of beauty that these great artists sacrificed the accurate map of the features that pleases family friends, and the profusion of hard accessories that minister to family pride." In the reproduction of facial topography the schools of Northern Europe excelled. The minute realism of the fifteenth century Flemings was carried over into the German portraiture of the next century, as exempli- fied in Diirer and Holbein. In the Dutch school of the seventeenth century this tendency reached the climax, Rembrandt making the only notable exception to the rule. Velasquez INTRODUCTORY xi had a way of his own in securing the likeness, not by the minute imitation of detail, but by a perfect reproduction of the total impression. In a general way, usually somewhat loosely, portrait painters are distinguished as subjective or objective, according as they put most of themselves or their sitters into the picture. If the subjective element is some- thing to be desired, the painter is the more eagerly sought after, especially by those con- scious of their own lack. It is as if he had a princely gift to bestow. Nobility and distinc- tion were conferred by Titian and Van Dyck; grace and charm by the French and English schools of the eighteenth century. On the other hand, men like Holbein, Frans Hals, and Velasquez, utterly lost themselves in their subjects, giving themselves up wholly to their impressions. Their work stood outside them- selves, as if they had merely, held the brush for an external motive force to wield. In the history of portraiture it is curious to notice that what was one man's limitation was another's opportunity. With Van Dyck and Nattier the constant reiteration of the xii INTRODUCTORY same subject, or class of subjects, became me- chanical. They were content to repeat them- selves to the point of mannerism, and lost the ambition to grow. Velasquez and Rembrandt found a single model an inexhaustible field of study. A liftime was not long enough for them to devote to the multitudinous varia- tions which one figure could suggest. Again it is curious that while some men were distinctly the product of their time; others seemed born out of due season. Titian came at the climax of Venetian art, to epito- mize the best of its characteristic qualities. Velasquez came two hundred years ahead of time, and struck out lines which his prede- cessors never dreamed of.
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