This book offers you an insight into portrait painting through the art of 40 great artists who truly are masters of the genre. Whether in oil, pastel, watercolour or acrylic, on monumental or more intimate formats, delve into their masterpieces.
- 180 pages of masterpieces by some of today’s best painters.
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Bilingual version: French and English.
CONTENTS:
Historical
Portfolio: Portraiture is one of the painting genres that has always fascinated
artists the most. Let’s take a look back at five centuries of masterpieces…
DRAWING :
Zimou Tan, Kate Zambrano, Amaya Gurpide, William Wu, Zin Lim
SELF
PORTRAIT: Warren Chang, Lee Price, David Leffel, Michael DeVore, Gregory
Mortenson
REALISM:
Luca Indraccolo, James Lloyd, Stephanie Deshpande, Serge Marshennikov
TOWARDS
ABSTRACTION: Jef Cablog, Benjamin Björklund
OIL
PAINTING: Jie Gao, Ian Cumberland, Kyle Stuckey, Nicole Michelle Tully,
Jennifer McChristian
PASTEL
PAINTING: Sophie Burbaloff, Cuong Nguyen, Timothy Stotz, Denis Jacques,
Alexandre Granger, George Dawnay
WATERCOLOUR
PAINTING: Mary Whyte, Liu Yi, Stephen Zhang, Stan Miller
Oscar Wilde once wrote that every portrait that is painted
with feeling is in fact a self-portrait, because it reveals part of the
artist’s identity. In fact, when painting or sculpting a model, artists are
actually choosing to portray a part of themselves. In this book we have tried,
above and beyond questions of style and different means of expression, to
provide a snapshot of current artistic creation. By lifting the veil on an
entire area of painting, our wish was to give you an overview of the practice
of portraiture in every size, shape and colour. Although their styles and
objectives may differ, the artists we have selected all share a certain
attachment to and a deep respect for tradition, some opting to go against it
and others to play with it. It is true that portraiture is a well-established
genre. If we look back to the famous Fayum portraits painted in Roman Egypt
during the first century of our era, nearly 2,000 years of faces look back at
us over the centuries. We also wanted to honour these masters of the past, but
with works that are just as striking today. That’s why you’ll find, for your
pleasure, a portfolio with the paintings and drawings of Da Vinci, Rubens, Van
Gogh (or on a much more recent note Anders Zorn) to name but a few. An entire
chapter is devoted to the major mediums with masters of the genre who put oil,
pastel and watercolour in the spotlight. Of course, we haven’t neglected
drawing, other techniques such as egg tempera and acrylic, nor contemporary
digital practices. We also wanted to pay tribute to all those artists who have
embarked on the ambitious task of self-portraiture - either as a challenge or
for practical reasons - by dedicating an entire chapter to the genre. Above
all, we hope that this book will make you aware of the great vitality of
contemporary art in general and portraiture in particular. If there is one
message that all the artists assembled here offer us, it is that portrait
painting has a bright future ahead of it. Here’s hoping you will enjoy reading
this as much as we did writing it!
--Laurent Benoist
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