This archive contains portraits and comments from earlier Old-Master Portrait of the Month pages.

The Smoker
Paul Cézanne, c 1890-1892
Oil on canvas, 36 1/2" x 29"
The Hermitage Museum,
St. Petersburg
Paul Cézanne was an eccentric painter who struggled for years and finally emerged as one of the greatest artists of the 19th century. Cézanne developed a new pictorial language which established him as one of the fathers of modern art. He described his paintings as 'constructions after nature', in which essential elements from the three-dimensional world were reassembled on a flat canvas.

Instead of modelling his subjects with light and shade, Cézanne modulated form with color, using a so-called 'flat-depth' method. Cézanne does not attempt to portray his sitter's character. Rather, with his distinctive two-dimensional style, Cézanne imbues his subject with solidity and a sculptured monumentality. [ Detail ]

A Procurator of Saint Mark's
Jacopo Tintoretto, 1575/1585
Oil on canvas, 54 5/8" x 39 7/8"
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Jacopo Tintoretto was Venice's greatest painter after Titian. He drew upon the Venetian colorist tradition and the draughtsmanship of Michelangelo to create an innovative, vigorously expressive personal style. Tintoretto's signature rapid brushwork gives his paintings an energetic freshness and immediacy.

This painting is a superb example of the fahionable portraits of the time and also of Tintoretto's later painting style. The subject's serious expression, authoritative posture, and ermine-lined crimson velvet robe confirm his high status as a civic official. Tintoretto depicts the luxurious garment with thinly painted red glazes and broad strokes of white. [ Detail ]

Portrait of the Comte de Turenne
Jacques-Louis David, 1816
Oil on panel, 44" x 32"
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen
After abandoning his early Rococo style, Jacques-Louis David founded the Neo-Classical movement in France. Inspired by heroes of Greek and Roman antiquity, he organized his paintings like marble bas reliefs with smooth, sculptured figures. David loved the theater and constructed many of his paintings as if they were dramatic stage scenes.

David was committed to the ideals of the French Revolution and became its artistic leader. In 1804, Napoleon made David his Premiere Peintre, but the artist ended his days in exile after the emporer's fall from power.

Throughout his turbulent career, David was a prolific portraitist, producing intimate works of remarkable immediacy. This late portrait of an exiled compatriot shows great technical mastery and human insight. [ Detail ]

Jo, La Belle Irlandaise
(The Beautiful Irish Girl)
Gustave Courbet, 1865–1866
Oil on canvas, 22" x 26"
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
Gustave Courbet's paintings are among the most powerful and controversial images of the 19th century. The son of a wealthy farmer from eastern France, Courbet moved to Paris at age 20 and eventually gained recognition, being hailed as the leader of the new 'Realist' school. In 1850, Courbet shocked Parisian society with pictures of unidealized and uncompromising peasants, portrayed on a heroic scale.

By 1865 Courbet came in demand as a portrait painter of fashionable ladies. During a visit to Trouville on the Normandy coast, he painted this portait of a beautiful Irish redhead, Joanna Hifferman, the mistress and model of James McNeill Whistler. This is one of several similar versions of the portrait.

Gertrude Stein
Pablo Picasso, 1906
Oil on canvas, 39 3/8" x 32"
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
Spanish artist Pablo Picasso is considered one of the most important and influential figures in twentieth-century art. Throughout his career, Picasso painted in a variety of styles, from classical to abstract. This portrait was produced in Paris between Picasso's Harlequin and Cubist periods. The subject, expatriate avant-garde American writer Gertude Stein, was an early supporter and patron of Picasso's work.

The portrait was painted from life in a broad, monumental style appropriate for the subject. After a visit to Spain, Picasso reworked the head without the sitter, creating an arresting, mask-like face. [ Detail ]