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 ]

Portrait of a Man (Self Portrait?)
Jan van Eyck, 1433
Oil on oak panel, 10 1/4" x 7 1/2"
The National Gallery, London
As founder of the Netherlandish school of painting, Jan van Eyck produced remarkable images of precise, naturalistic detail and visual splendor. He is credited with refining the oil painting technique by applying many thin layers of translucent color glazes. Van Eyck's technical mastery enabled him to reproduce the visual world with convincing reality and brilliant, luminous color.

Van Eyck's contribution to portraiture also was significant. He presented his subjects in a naturalistic manner with life-like detail. The face was shown in three-quarter view and turned towards the light, allowing the features to be carefully modeled with subtle shadows. Van Eyck employed the novel device of having his sitter look directly out of the picture.

This portrait, possibly of van Eyck himself, is dramatic in effect. The subject appears to emerge from darkness, holding the viewer's attention with a penetrating gaze. The face and headdress display van Eyck's masterful skill in rendering the play of natural light over surface textures. [ Detail ]

Pierrot, formerly known as Gilles
Antoine Watteau, c. 1718–1719
Oil on canvas, 72 1/2" x 58 1/2"
The Louvre, Paris
Antoine Watteau was the most important French painter of the 18th century, helping to shape development of the delicate and refined Rococo style. Whereas most Rococo art is associated with frivolity, Watteau's paintings often conveyed an air of gentle melancholy.

The artificial world of the theater provided much of Watteau's subject matter. Watteau placed his figures as costumed actors in a dreamy, poetical landscape. Pierrot, a stock character of the 18th-century Italian Comedy, is portrayed here as a sad clown. Unusual for Watteau are the large size of the work, the boldness of the figure, and the broad handling of paint, all of which suggest that the painting was intended to be viewed from a distance, possibly as a theatrical signboard.

Watteau was a gifted colorist who suffered a tragically early death from tuberculosis at age 37.

Maria Bicknell, Mrs John Constable
John Constable, 1816
Oil on canvas, 12" x 10"
Tate Britain, London
British landscape painter John Constable found inspiration for his work in his native Suffolk countryside. Constable captured the atmospheric effects of fleeting clouds and sunlight with brushwork of unrivaled sensitivity. Although his genius is universally acknowledged today, during his own lifetime landscape painting was unfashionable in England and Constable had to struggle for recognition, supplementing his meager earnings with portrait commissions.

This portrait of Constable's beloved wife was painted shortly before their marriage. He wrote her: ‘I would not be without your portrait for the world the sight of it soon calms my spirit under all trouble’. [ Detail ]

A Young Woman with a Macaw
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, c. 1760
Oil on canvas, 28" x 21"
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK
Venetian master Giovanni Battista Tiepolo was the greatest exponent of the Italian Rococo style. As a master of illusion and decorative painting, Tiepolo produced dazzling frescoes and vast ceiling works of breathtaking splendor. During his long and prolific career, his international reputation brought commissions to decorate royal palaces in Würzburg and Madrid.

Although he excelled at working on a huge scale, Tiepolo also could be brilliant in much more intimate pictures. Evidently painted from the model, this is probably not intended as a straightforward portrait but rather as an allegorical work. Tiepolo was a consummate master of the oil technique. His brushwork has great verve and fluency, as well as delicacy in portraying the woman's beautiful skin. [ Detail ]