ART OPINION: What is a good portrait?I spend a lot of time drawing portraits as well as looking at portraits in museums. This has led me to think about what makes a portrait good?
Let's begin by analyzing what is a portrait? A portrait is a picture of a person or persons. (Of course, a portrait can be of other creatures besides humans (e.g. a pet portrait) but for sake of brevity, we will stay with humans in this analysis). Still, not all pictures of people are portraits. A picture in which a person is merely one of the objects in a landscape is not a portrait nor is an advertising drawing in which the person depicted is just a prop to support the product being advertised. What separates a portrait from other pictures of people is that a portrait says something about the specific person who is the subject of the picture. It goes beyond physical appearance and conveys something to the viewer about the person in the picture. Thus, a portrait can be defined as a picture that says something about a specific person. Of course, the message that is being conveyed is the artist's message. The picture embodies his or her perception of the subject. For example, in Goya's portraits of the Spanish royal family, the elegantly-dressed sitters who commissioned the pictures are made to look like an unpleasant bunch of fools. The message that is being conveyed does not have to be profound. It can be a straight forward statement about the artist's perception of the subject's personality or of the emotions the subject evoked. It follows that a mastery of art technique is not, standing alone, enough to make a portrait good. Even if an artist developed the ability to create a picture of a person in as much detail as a camera or a copying machine can do, it would not be sufficient because a good portrait requires being able to go beyond the physical appearance and reveal something about the subject's personality. Indeed, it is irrelevant whether the picture is a good likeness of the subject. No one knows whether Leonardo Da Vinci's “Mona Lisa” (aka “La Giogonda”) actually looks like Lisa Gherardini, yet it is considered a great portrait. Similarly, in many of John Singer Sargent's excellent portrait drawings, the women's necks are elongated in order to fit with his vision of grace and elegance. Along the same lines, it is unnecessary for the subject to be a real person. If an artist makes a drawing of an imaginary person but in the process communicates something of the artist's feelings, it is a good portrait. Edvard Munch's “The Scream” comes to mind. This is not to say that technique is irrelevant. Technique provides a vehicle for the artist to communicate his or her vision or feelings toward the subject. Just as a good vocabulary makes one a more effective speaker, a mastery of technique gives the artist a greater ability to communicate visually. For example, as seen in his early works, Picasso was a master of traditional drawing. This skill gave him the ability to choose to draw simply or in a complicated manner whenever it suited his artistic vision. It also follows that an artist with bad technique is constrained in what he or she can say. A good portrait can be in any style - - traditional figurative, abstract, primitive, impressionistic, expressionistic etc. The criterion is not the style but how well the picture conveys the artist's vision of the person being depicted. Consequently, whether a portrait is good or not very much depends on its ability to communicate to the viewer. |
Leonardo's "Mona Lisa" is a great portrait but is it a good likeness?
Above: John Singer Sargent's vision of Madame X caused a scandal in 19th century Paris.
Below: Pierre Auguste Renoir's "By the Seashore" conveys his perception of his future wife. 
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Art opinion - What is a good portrait?