Portraiture

This fascinating new book explores the world of portraiture from a number of vantage points, and asks key questions about its nature. How has portraiture changed over the centuries? How have portraits represented their subjects, and how have they been interpreted? Issues of identity, modernity, and gender are considered within a cultural and historical context. Shearer West uncovers much intriguing detail about a genre that has often been seen as purely representational, featuring examples from African tribes to Renaissance princes, and from 'stars' such as David and Victoria Beckham to ordinary people. In the process, she shows us how to communicate with the past in an exciting new way.

This is the first general and theoretical study devoted entirely to portraiture. Drawing on a broad range of images from Antiquity to the twentieth century, which includes paintings, sculptures, prints, cartoons, postage stamps, medals, documents and photographs, Richard Brilliant investigates the genre as a particular phenomenon in Western art that is especially sensitive to changes in the perceived nature of the individual in society. The author's argument on behalf of portraiture (and he draws on examples by such artists as Botticelli, Rembrandt, Matisse, Warhol and Hockney) does not comprise a mere survey of the genre, nor is it a straightforward history of its reception. Instead, Brilliant presents a thematic and cogent analysis of the connections between the subject-matter of portraits and the beholder's response – the response he or she makes to the image itself and to the person it represents. Portraiture's extraordinary longevity and resilience as a genre is a testament to the power of this imaginative transaction between the subject, the artist and the beholder.

In this fully revised and expanded book, Nicholas Beer examines the sight-size portrait method, in which the artist stands back at a distance to view the picture and sitter side-by-side and to scale. Nick demonstrates the technique in a series of projects that culminate in portrait painting. There are also sections on the history of sight-size, early treatises on portraiture, and the 'philosophy' of seeing. This new edition also includes a 'starts and studies' section, which looks at a series of unfinished paintings in detail to analyse the thought processes and techniques of great artists. Includes; an historical overview of the technique and introduction to the traditional language of drawing and painting; the limited palette and the philosophy of seeing; a step-by-step sequence with practical instruction, and examples of great masters ranging from Van Dyck to Sargent. Superbly illustrated with 152 colour illustrations including step-by-step sequence.

Portraiture, the most popular genre of painting, occupies a central position in the history of Western art. Despite this, its status within academic art theory is uncertain. This volume provides an introduction to major issues in its history.

This book, published to accompany a major exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, opening in April 1996, no doubt will long remain the definitive work on its subject.

First published in 2005. Since the early nineteenth century, Byron, the man and his image, have captured the hearts and minds of untold legions of people of all political and social stripes in Britain, Europe, America, and around the world. This book focuses on the history and cultural significance for Federal America of the only portrait of Byron known to have been painted by a major artist. In private hands from 1826 until this day, Thomas Sulley’s Byron has never before been the subject of scholarly study. Beginning with the discovery of the portrait in 1999 and a 200-year narrative of the portrait’s provenance and its relation to other well-known Byron portraits, the author discusses the work within the broad context of British and American portraiture of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

This unique book is a photographer’s guide to the powerful medium of the environmental portrait. It explores in lucid detail the many "moving parts" of this imaging style, including the techniques and creative processes that drive some of this genre’s finest contemporary practitioners. In Environmental Portraiture, author Jim Cornfield puts his readers behind the viewfinder to help them successfully master what he calls "the portrait photographer’s most high-powered tool." In a series of detailed tutorial chapters and study models, Cornfield unpacks every practical aspect of the environmental portrait scenario, including research, location scouting, lighting interior and exterior environments, props and wardrobe, lens selection, composition, color, and after-capture. Along with this wealth of comprehensive nuts-and-bolts information, the book probes the deep structure of environmental portraiture—the blend of a sitter’s backstory with the meaningful visual clues in their surroundings. He introduces such concepts as "portraitcraft," "cognitive weight," and "the ideas and emotions quotient," among the many dimensions of an environmental portrait that create eye-opening revelations about the person in front of your lens. A separate section of the book is devoted to a prestigious roster of contemporary environmental portraitists, specifically recruited for this book to explore in-depth selected samples from their diverse portfolios. They bring with them a score of insights, tips and fascinating anecdotes that demonstrate their individualized approaches to this versatile branch of the photographer’s craft. Written for professionals, amateurs and serious students of photography, this book is both a guide and inspiration to creating powerful, communicative environmental portraiture.

"The writing is beautiful, the ideas persuasive, and the picture it paints of the process of careful observation is one that every writer should read. . . . A rich and wonderful book." —American Journal of Education A landmark contribution to the field of research methodology, this remarkable book illuminates the origins, purposes, and features of portraiture—placing it within the larger discourse on social science inquiry and mapping it onto the broader terrain of qualitative research.