explores the evolution of portraiture from the end of the 18th century until the present.
In
contrast to portraiture as the tired flattery of the rich and powerful,
the invigorating new movements of Neoclassicism, Romanticism and
Realism that took hold of art at the end of the 18th century and into
the 19th century were the result of a desire for a sense of "unvarnished
truth," and a more honest and gritty incisiveness of depiction emerged.
By the 20th century, the hallmark of the portrait was individuality;
the sense of “personality” was primary, whether stylistically
Post-Impressionist, Expressionist, Surrealist, or Realist.
The book is divided into seven sections:
ARTIST
SELF-PORTRAITS, including Gustave Dore, Richard (“Mad”) Dadd, Adolf von
Menzel, Roderic O'Conor, Antonio Mancini, Edouard Vuillard, Leon
Spillaert , Frank Brangwyn, Dora Maar, David Levine, and Alfred
Hitchcock PORTRAITS OF ARTISTS, including portraits of
Jacques-Louis David by Delafontaine and J. B. Isabey, Henry Fuseli by
William Etty, William Blake by George Richmond, Samuel Palmer by John
Linnel, John Ruskin by Samuel Laurence, Odilon Redon by Claude-Emile
Schuffenecker, Alfred von Menzel by William Rothenstein, Max Klinger by
Emil Orlik, and Thomas Eakins by Mrs. Palmer FAMILY, portraits
of wives, lovers, children, close friends by Sir Thomas Lawrence, John
Linnell, Francis Danby, Daniel Maclise, Adolf von Menzel, Edward Burne
Jones, George Bellows, and Lucien Freud UNKNOWN SITTERS AS
SUBJECTS, portraits by Louis-Léopold Boilly, Théodore Chasseriau ,
William Mulready, Richard Dadd, Adolf von Menzel, Jean-Jacques Henner, Gottfried Helnwein. FAME,
portraits of famous individuals, including George Washington, André
Chenier, Washington Irving, Ellen André, Henry Irving, Oscar Wilde DRAMA AND IMAGINATION, images by Baron Gerard and Girodet, Auguste Edouart Richard Dadd, Nicholas Sternberg, R. Crumb REPOSE and ENDINGS, images by William Henry Hunt, Théodore Rousseau, Hans Bellmer, Lucian Freud, Carpeaux