{"id":435041,"date":"2026-06-29T17:24:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T21:24:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.1stdibs.mom\/blogs\/the-study\/?p=435041"},"modified":"2026-06-30T04:04:07","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T08:04:07","slug":"portrait-paintings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.1stdibs.mom\/blogs\/the-study\/portrait-paintings\/","title":{"rendered":"Pretty as a Picture? With Portraiture, It\u2019s Far More Interesting Than Just That."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Clockwise from top left: Head of a Girl II – Etching on paper<\/em>, 1982, by Lucian Freud<\/a>; Portrait of Dr. Juan Ignacio Galves<\/em>, 1841, by Jos\u00e9 Celestino Figueroa<\/a>; Mick Jagger FS II.139 Screen Print on Paper<\/em>, 1975, by Andy Warhol<\/a>; Watcher<\/em>, 2024, by Michael Carson<\/a>; Portrait de femme – Berthe Poret<\/em>, 1862-1863, by Pierre Auguste Renoir<\/a>; La Carmencita<\/em>, 1890, by John Singer Sargent<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Perhaps it\u2019s the smile, the glint in the eye or the almost imperceptible tilt of the head. Or it could be the clothing, whether a luxuriously embroidered gown of centuries past or a modern-day uniform of T-shirt and jeans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whatever the hook, a human\u2019s likeness captured by the hand of an artist has the power to captivate in a uniquely intimate way. That\u2019s why many of art history\u2019s most admired and valuable works \u2014 from Leonardo da Vinci\u2019s Mona Lisa<\/em> to John Singer Sargent\u2019s<\/a> Madame X<\/em>, Gustav Klimt\u2019s<\/a> Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I<\/em> and Andy Warhol\u2019s<\/a> depictions of icons like Marilyn Monroe, Liza Minnelli and Elvis Presley \u2014 are portraits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Left: Portrait of Debutante Elsie Elizabeth Ebsworth<\/em>, 1893, by Annie Louisa Swynnerton<\/a>. Right: Talking to the Moon<\/em>, 2022, by Demarcus McGaughey<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

More than a quarter of the way through the 21st century, with the number of selfies snapped daily on cell phones around the world creeping, by some estimates, into the billions, you might assume that old-school portraiture had become pass\u00e9. And yet, the Louvre is building a new gallery just to handle the shoulder-to-shoulder crowds angling for a glimpse of the Mona Lisa.<\/em> In the past few years, some of the most compelling art exhibitions have presented fresh takes on portraiture, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art\u2019s retrospective of the Finnish artist Helene Schjerfbeck, heretofore little known outside Scandinavia, and the traveling mid-career survey of Amy Sherald, who first came to national attention with her striking official portrait of then\u2013First Lady Michelle Obama. Last November, Klimt\u2019s Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer<\/em>, an ethereal image of the daughter of his most loyal patrons, went for $236.4 million at Sotheby\u2019s, making it the second-most-expensive work<\/a> ever sold at auction.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Emily Dickinson<\/em>, a collage by John Morse<\/a>, was given to writer Elizabeth Gilbert by the artist. She discusses the work in the latest episode of Objects of Desire<\/a>, the 1stDibs podcast.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The draw is unmistakable. It\u2019s nearly impossible to look at a well-executed portrait and not feel a connection to the subject\u2019s humanity \u2014 and, by extension, our own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Portraiture has been foundational to art from its inception. Consider ancient Egyptian funerary masks<\/a> placed atop mummified remains or the marble odes to ancient Greek and Roman emperors and philosophers that have inspired sculptors for millennia. Later, as modern European civilization blossomed, the memorializing of VIPs in oil paint became ingrained in the culture.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Duke of Wellington’s Niece, Portrait of Lady Bagot,<\/em> 1807, by Sir John Hoppner<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Long before the emergence of the commercial-gallery system that we know today, the Old Masters<\/a> relied on private commissions for their living, and portraits formed a large portion of their output. Whether court painters like Diego Vel\u00e1zquez in 17th-century Spain or Rembrandt<\/a> and other chroniclers of that period\u2019s ascendant merchant class in northern Europe, successful practitioners became adept at conveying power, wealth and status. The era\u2019s fashionable clothing, furnishings, globes and scientific instruments still signal riches and worldliness, while the abundance of skulls, portraitists\u2019 go-to memento mori<\/a>, offer windows into the subjects\u2019 and artists\u2019 preoccupations. Sometimes artists even inserted images of their paying customers into religious paintings<\/a> to honor their piety \u2014 and patronage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Left: Albert Einstein<\/em>, 1980, by Andy Warhol<\/a>. Right: Meridian Green Don<\/em>, 2018, by Simon Birch<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But before you conclude that artists made portraits just for the money, take a look at their self-portraits<\/a>, some of which rank among the most moving pieces in the canon. Rembrandt\u2019s roughly 40 surviving iterations are like a time-lapse record of his life. The later works, showing his face lined from the passing years, are especially poignant. Four centuries later, the same is true of Ellsworth Kelly<\/a>. Though best known for his shaped abstract canvases, typically covered in just one or two vibrant hues, Kelly, who died in 2015 at the age of 92, left behind a trove of drawings that track his mien from fresh-faced innocence to bespectacled old age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Painted portraiture\u2019s resonance is proved by its survival. The advent of photography infamously disrupted the medium of oil paint, offering a more precise likeness at a fraction of the cost and time. Very quickly, the masses, too, were able to memorialize their loved ones and milestones for the ages in framed images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The market for painted portraits, however, never really went away. The privileged set still wanted canvases to hang alongside those of their ancestors, and, more intriguingly, great 20th-century iconoclasts, from Alice Neel<\/a> to Lucian Freud<\/a>, found their calling in creating psychologically charged, often unflattering likenesses. Neel recruited regular people, including her neighbors in Spanish Harlem and pregnant women, while Freud often made his subjects pose for days or weeks on end. His fleshy, imperfect bodies, male and female alike, challenged centuries of idealized nudes<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“Ada with Flowers” Screenprint, Signed Edition of 65, 20th Century Art<\/em>, 1980, by Alex Katz<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

For a time, Abstract Expressionism<\/a> made figuration unfashionable, but as the Pop art <\/a>movement reinvigorated representational work, a clutch of artists gave new life to portraiture. Borrowing from billboards\u2019 flat swaths of brilliant color, Alex Katz<\/a> began in the 1960s rendering sitters \u2014 most famously his wife, Ada, whom the 98-year-old has painted hundreds of times \u2014 with minimal detail. Soon Chuck Close<\/a> was painting his photorealistic \u201cheads,\u201d as he called his monumental renderings of family, friends and fellow artists, and David Hockney was bringing cinematic narrative to his double portraits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The genre has continued to evolve, recently undergoing a seismic change as prominent artists of color have challenged orthodoxy on just who should be immortalized. In addition to Sherald, well-regarded painters like Jordan Casteel<\/a>, Mickalene Thomas<\/a> and Njideka Akunyili Crosby have built practices in which neither fame nor fortune \u2014 nor European ancestry \u2014 is a prerequisite for a posing. The result is a collective body of work that underscores portraiture\u2019s primary function, putting our shared humanity front and center.<\/p>\n\n\n\t

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Perhaps it\u2019s the smile, the glint in the eye or the almost imperceptible tilt of the head. Or it could be the clothing, whether a luxuriously embroidered gown of centuries past or a modern-day uniform of T-shirt and jeans. Whatever the hook, a human\u2019s likeness captured by the hand of an artist has the power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":293,"featured_media":435072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-06-29T21:28:25Z","apple_news_api_id":"778983e8-3b27-492a-91c5-90935cdef6d4","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-06-29T22:53:59Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Ad4mD6DsnSSqRxZCTXN721A","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[260],"tags":[],"dibs-categories":[],"dibs-designs":[],"dibs-styles":[],"dibs-creators":[],"dibs-sellers":[],"class_list":["post-435041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fine-art"],"acf":{"post_format":"article","subtitle":"A person\u2019s likeness captured by the hand of an artist has the power to captivate in a uniquely intimate way. ","contributors":{"hide_byline":false,"columnist":[{"ID":435073,"post_author":"293","post_date":"2026-06-29 12:13:01","post_date_gmt":"2026-06-29 16:13:01","post_content":"\n

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