Bere Birra
Today, I am presenting a portrait which does not appear on my website or on my social media. It isn’t for sale. It isn’t important in any public way. It’s a portrait of my husband having a beer leaning on a wall in Sicily. It was our second trip to Italy. Like all my work, it started with a photograph and now it hangs in our home.
Painted portraits have existed for thousands of years. For most of history the genre has been a luxury for the rich and powerful, or an indulgence for power structures including religious institutions, governments, and commerce. Prior to the invention of the photograph, the portrait was a vehicle to document the “likeness” of the subject. Artists working as portrait painters were not always formally trained. Many portrait painters worked as tradesmen in their field.
After the invention of photography, there were worries that the working portrait painter would be put out of business. (The conflict reminds me of the current panic about the emergence of AI). The opposite happened. There was a rebirth of artistic experimentation at the beginning of the photographic era ;1840c - 1900. Artists were able to use the photographic images as reference which eliminated extended periods where subjects had to “sit” for the artist. Today portrait painting is still a viable niche in the art market.
I have been thinking about portraits this week after reading about and seeing the memes of the red portrait of King Charles. The portrait was painted by Jonathan Yeo. Yeo is a portrait painter by trade. He was described by Gentleman's Quarterly Magazine as one of the world's most in-demand portraitists.
Yeo, the son of a conservative politician, has an impressive resume including exhibits at the Museum of National History and a retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, London. He has painted portraits of celebrities, politicians and members of the Royal family. The commissioned portrait of King Charles is a massive 8.5 feet by 6.5 feet. It was paid for by the “Worshipful Company of Drapers” ( the name is derived from a Medieval guild). It will hang among other portraits of monarchs in Drapers Hall.
The King sat for the portrait four times for an hour over two years. He selected a red coat of the Welsh Guards to wear for each sitting. At the King’s suggestion Yeo added the butterfly over one of his shoulders as a symbol of transformation. When the completed painting was shown to the King and the Queen Consort, it was well received.
For me and many others, the portrait fails to meet the mark. Unlike the brilliant portrait by Whistler I wrote about in the previous post, there is not a wide range of color, or value, leaving it visually flat. The artist extended a single hue beyond the figure to the background. If not for the color choice, the impression would seem like a ghost floating in an empty space. The face of the subject jumps out in the sea of muddled paint strokes. The “red" reads visually as a coral or a pink. It is nothing like the red of the military uniform seen in his official portrait.
Official Birth Portrait by Hugo Burnand
“It's one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it's another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” Paul Caponigro
The reason for my ongoing commitment to figurative work is not to render an likeness. If I needed to remember what someone looked at in a moment in time I would, like most people; take out a photo album or scroll through digital images. A portrait is more than reproduction. A portrait is a conversation with the subject as I paint.
On the day the photograph for “Bere Birra” was taken, my husband and I were resting after a trip in the town where Francis Ford Coppala had lived while making the first Godfather film. It’s a classic movie; iconic and a favorite of ours. Like the films central characters, my husband's maternal relatives immigrated from Sicily and made their home in New York . As we entered the shop where we purchased the beer, it might have been a deli in an Italian neighborhood. It was welcoming and familiar.
The original photograph contains compositional elements that appeal to me as an artist. First the subject is nicely framed within the surrounding architecture. He leans against a rectangular opening. The curve of the cobblestone path leads the viewer's eye toward the figure. The figure itself had on a bright white shirt to go along with white hair. That brightest white value in the mustache creates a natural focal point.
In the painting process I enjoyed creating the textures of stone, the pop of blue of the sky at the end of the street, the burnt red that repeats in the path, the chimney, and gutter. Most importantly, it’s a portrait that accurately depicts the character of the subject. He is relaxed and comfortable leaning on a wall having a beer on a perfect day. There is no pretense about this man.
Portraits should convey the emotional temperature of their subject. The surroundings and the way the subject is presented must ring true at a gut level. Maybe that’s the issue with the portrait of King Charles. The emotional message has been veiled in the attention getting presentation by the painter. Possibly the subject of the portrait had too much input into the outcome or maybe the painter was making a statement. Whatever the reason, the portrait will remain questionable.
A portrait, which I think rings true of its subject, Winston Churchill was so loathed by the subject that he had it destroyed. It was painted 1954 by Graham Sutherland. It was presented publicly in Parliament, never hung publicly, and eventually burned by Churchill's private secretary on his estate.
I like it…. What do you think?
I agree with you on all counts and portraits!