Greatest Portrait Paintings
List of Best Portraits, Painted by the
Greatest Artists in History.
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Greatest Portrait Paintings |
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Top 50 Greatest Portraits (c.1400-1970)Contents • Introduction
and Criteria In 1669, Andre Felibien, Secretary to the French Académie des Beaux-Arts, declared that - with the exception of history painting - portrait art was the worthiest type of fine art painting. No doubt if he was alive today he would say portrait art was No 1. After all portraits of people possess that unique human element which sets them apart from other painting genres. |
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TYPES OF ARTS |
Our list of the 50 Greatest Portraits features works in fresco, tempera, oils and watercolours, painted on panels, canvas, walls and ceilings, by 35 of the world's best portrait artists. It contains all forms of the genre, including: religious, mythological and historical portraits, as well as celebrity, vanity and nude portraiture. Selected by our Editor, Neil Collins MA LLB, these individual, family and group portrait paintings illustrate many of the major movements in the history of art, and should serve as a sound basis for further study. Unlike our other selections, our list of best portraits has been chosen purely on the basis of subjective taste. So we have ignored all objective factors like durability, the impact of the artist's work on his contemporaries, painterly technique, opinions of art museums and critics, and so on. The only regulator was the sheer number of portraits we looked at: about three thousand, which is actually quite a lot of art to scrutinize. For our interpretation of some of the greatest portraits, see: Famous Paintings Analyzed. |
 Sarah Goodin Barrett Moulton: "Pinkie" (1794). By Thomas Lawrence. Huntington Institute, San Marino, California. |
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So what sort of portraits do we like? First, we prefer realism to abstraction. So De Kooning is about as abstract as we can take. Second, we like soul. So Rembrandt and Modigliani feature strongly. Third, we like passion in our portraiture: so while we are blown away by close-ups of Michelangelo's religious portraits, we also like the all-over intensity of Lucian Freud and David Hockney. Fourth, we like colour: even in small doses, if it has power. That said, portraiture is first and last a visual art, so sometimes we like a painting without quite knowing why. Finally, we feel more comfortable with full-size rather than miniature portrait painting, even when painted by the best miniaturists. Top 50 Portrait PaintingsListed chronologically by artist. For neoclassical portraiture, see works
by Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-79),
Angelica Kauffmann
(1741-1807) and Jacques-Louis
David (1748-1825). |
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For more information on portraiture, try these resources: • English
Figurative Painting (c.1700-1900) |
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• For info about portraiture in Ireland,
see: Irish Portrait Artists.
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International Art |
