Portrait painting, an undervalued art Portrait painting, an undervalued art Return to Miscellaneous Nowadays there is an emphasis on astonishing viewers with, for example, ordure in tins or on walls. People go to see what awful or annoying works of art are on show.
Portrait painting has a distinguished history.
Piero della Francesca's portrait of Frederigo da Montefeltro, Rembrandt's self portraits, or Reynold's picture of Nelly O'Brien. We have many contemporary portraitists whose pictures show more of the character of the sitter than a colour photograph would. Their work goes underrated or ignored by the curators of art galleries or the organizers of exhibitions. Yet in time to come our ancestors could be very impressed by a portrait of, say, Mrs Thatcher at her most aggressive, or Einstein being reflective. Our brains are especially tuned to the study and recognition of faces and body language.