Portraits - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly:

Open Letter to Artists

Let's get the bad out of the way. If you want to see really bad portrait painting, check out the likenesses by the Dutch in the 17th century.

Most noticeable is their lack of imagination. The subjects stare straight at you with little expression. The painters' skill at rendering detail realistically seems to be the main idea. Clearly, the patrons of this stuff demanded that. After all, they were a practical lot - wine merchants, heads of a business that made money from trade with colonial possessions – and bought art the same way they bought household goods: They liked to get their money's worth. They were the mercantile middle-class who spent their time in counting-houses and considered the Dutch masters on a level with grocers.

In fact, their portraits seem to conjure up food with their flour-faced women and beefy-faced men with hammy fingers. Unlike portraits that came before - of clerics, of kings - these are the pictures of the newly rich, the Dutch burghers who wanted to show off. You don't get anything more than effigies of "look-at-me" materialism. Subtract the religious and the royal figure from portrait painting and the only people who could afford it were the nouveau riche. Which accounts for the richness of the renderings: of lace, of satin and brocade.

I'm thinking of "Portrait of a Man with a Spear" by Isaac Luttichuys. He poses as if he were a hunter. That he's wearing puffed sleeves suggests otherwise. "Portrait of a Woman with A Rose," also by Luttichuys, shows the woman holding up an edge of her satin shawl, as if to call attention to its grandness. Attention to embroidery on the bodice of the bejewelled figure in "Portrait of Maria Bultel" by Jan Antonisz. van Ravesteyn, and the lace collar in "Michiel Pauw, Lord of Hoogersmilde and Oosterwyk" seem similarly materialistic.

   

Portrait of a Man with a Spear and Portrait of a Woman with a Rose by Isaac Luttichuys, c.1663

Dutch portrait painting of the 17th century, then, is a likeness of a station in life - a self-presentation. You get the sense the sitters posed themselves, even picking their props. Dutch portraits are like marble busts in two dimensions. All that's missing are the pedestals.

Now for the good stuff, and from the same time and place, no less: portraits by Rembrandt. He left behind 50 of himself that offer unflinching looks at his bulging jowls and bulbous nose, not to mention his states of mind.

Self Portrait with Two Circles by Rembrandt, 1660

He could have painted more portraits of other people. But they'd have had to sit for months owing to his habit of repainting and repainting to get the image right. Sometimes his paint would amount to half the thickness of one's forefinger. Reportedly, the colors in one portrait are so heavily applied that you could lift it from the floor by the nose.

But here's the thing. It wasn't that Rembrandt was above liking money the way the Dutch burghers and merchants did. In fact, Rembrandt liked money to such an extent that his pupils would tease him by painting pennies on the floor to watch him try to pick them up. At the same time, though, he wouldn't compromise his painting. He didn't cave to the marketplace to make a killing with his portraits. With them, he sought to capture feelings and fallibilities. One of his self-portraits made when he was almost 60 is a beaut. To get you to look hard at his face and read his thoughts, he kept an eye in shadow. He also shows himself as a painter, with palette and brushes in hand. No fancy clothes here. He even looks untidy. He's telling us that painting is important to him.

Self Portrait by Rembrandt, 1658

Rembrandt cared about art and not just his.

To elevate the station of artists in his time, he made a practice of outbidding others at art auctions of local art to emphasize the prestige of his profession.

Van Gogh was right when he named Rembrandt one who could paint the face of Christ.

Photo credits: Wikipedia

— by Joan Altabe  |  January 31, 2007  |  Print Version - PDF

Print   |  

back to top