Portrait painting

Biographical Information Venus lamenting the death of Adonis is a drawing designed by Benjamin West in the year 1768. He spent most of his time designing paintings such as this while in London. Description Venus Lamenting, the death of Adonis, is a drawing about Adonis, a mortal youth, as from the Ovid Metamorphoses. Venus was a mythological goddess who fell in love with him. They used to spend most of their time together hunting wild animals. He was slain while hunting and lay down on the…

Portrait painting thrived in the Netherlands with the increase in production driven by interest in the idea of personhood and the definition of the individual self. Portraits help document the development of a personal identity as it connects factors like marital status, class, and profession. A common portrait genre produced during the seventeenth century portrays their subjects with an impassive demeanor with little vigor. At first, the paintings may be evaluated as lacking “personality” or…

Dog with Me, created in 1938 by Frida Kahlo, is a self-portrait created with the use of oil-based paints. Frida Kahlo was a Mexican artist who was born in 1907 and died in 1954. This artwork is found in the Dallas museum of arts and it is found outside of the American art gallery. While the painting may appear to be simply, it has many artistic elements within it. As the title of the artwork implies there are only two figures within the painting, Frida Kahlo and her dog. Kahlo is seen seating on…

Supporting the flowing art market and the popularity of his portraits, Rembrandt van Rijn sold his (what is being called) Aristotle with a Bust of Homer. It is known that the piece was originally purchased in by the prince of Sicily, Don Antonio Ruffo, but whether it was also commissioned by him is unknown. Regardless, the illustrations in the imitative portrait appear to be of Rembrandt’s whole decision. Shown is a deeply pensive, abstracted Aristotle with his hand on a bust of the late-poet…

chose women as his main subjects. His works include women of high social class, children of the wealthy and political figures. He also did painting of women in lower classes that he came in contact with in Venice, Capri, Spain and Africa. In this essay I will be discussing his works, the history of the paintings and the meaning behind the women in the paintings. John Singer Sargent was born 1856 in Florence, Italy. He had 2 sisters; he was close to both of them and often took piano and dance…

renowned and influential portrait artists. The Art Gallery of South Australia has curated an exhibit of the artist’s portraiture and drawing works. Robert Hannaford’s impact upon Australian Art can hardly be overlooked. A regular Archibald Prize finalist since 1994, he has painted the likes of former Prime Minister Paul Keating, Chancellors and Ministers within Parliament,…

Self Portrait, Myself at 66, is an oil on canvas, painted by Mathias J. Alten at his home studio in Grand Rapids, Michigan. and is most likely his final self-portrait. It currently resides in the George and Barbara Gordon Gallery at Grand Valley State University as a part of a collection titled ‘Mathias J. Alten: An American Impressionist’. Alten painted himself as a gray-haired man with a white shirt and gray pants, holding a palette and paintbrushes. It is evident in this work that Alten has…

long career with over 600 paintings, Vigée-LeBrun is “characterized” and marveled “…as the much sought-after portraitist of not only European royalty and nobility, but also of notable personalities in the arts and letters of her time.” (May, 1) Accomplishing an early start in her career, Vigée-LeBrun, at the age of fifteen was already supporting her recently widowed mother and younger brother through her portrait paintings. (NMWA, web) According…

century portraiture was beginning to manifest in art. This genre of art began to become the main source of income for many Flemish artists (Kleiner, 555). Notably, portraits were usually used as gifts in order to insure remembrance or to assert higher authority. Flemish artists would embellish symbolic meanings in the details of their paintings. An example of this would be in Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin by Rogier Van Der Weyden, on the armrests it depicts Adam, Eve, and the serpent, this is to…

Castiglione (1616-1670) and Rembrandt (1606-1669) were the first two artists introduced the true artwork of Monotypes. William Blake (1757-1827) was another major artist of monotype. He developed the technique of monotypes by using egg tempera to create some of the images for his poems. However, because he was quite secretive with his unique techniques, the methods he applied was not popular. During the etching revival, Vicomte Ludovic Napoleon Lepic (1839-1889) introduced a new technique,…