generally rows of portraits ranged in double or single lines,
without much attempt at grouping or composition. Later,
in the hands of painters like Rembrandt, Frans Hals and Van
der Helst, these pictures of civic guards, hospital regents and
masters of gilds assumed a very different character, and are
among the very finest works produced by the Dutch portrait
painters of the 17th century. They may be termed “subscription
portraits ”—each member of the gild who desired a place
on the canvas agreeing, before the commission was given, to
pay, according to a graduated scale, his share of the cost.
Among the most famous examples of this class of portraits
are “The Anatomy Lesson,” “The March-out of Captain
Banning Kock and his Company” (erroneously called “The
Night Watch”), and “The Five Syndics of the Cloth-Workers
Guild,” by Rembrandt. The magnificent portrait groups at
Haarlem by Hals—the next greatest portrait painter of Holland
after Rembrandt—and the “Schuttersmaaltyd” by Van der
Helst in the Amsterdam Museum, which Reynolds considered
“ perhaps the first picture of portraits in the world,” must also
be mentioned.
Of the pictorial art of Spain previous to the 15th century, little, if any, survives. Flemish example was long paramount and Flemish painters were patronized in high places. In the 16th century the names of native Spanish artists began to appear—Morales, Ribera, Zurbaran, a great though not a professed portrait painter; and in the last year of the century Velasquez was born, the greatest of Spain’s artists, and one of the great portrait painters of the world. None, perhaps, has ever equalled him in keen insight into character, or in the swift magic of his brush. Philip IV., Olivarez and Innocent X. live for us on his canvases. His constantly varying, though generally extremely simple, methods, explain to some extent the interest and charm his works possess for artists. Depth of feeling and poetic imagination were, however, lacking, as may be seen in his prosaic treatment of such subjects as the “Coronation of the Virgin,” the “Mars” and other kindred works in the Madrid Gallery. Velasquez must be classed with those whose career has been prematurely cut short. His works often show signs of haste and of the scanty leisure which the duties of his office of “Aposentador Mayor” left him—duties which ended in the fatal journey to the Isle of Rhé.
In France the most distinguished portrait painters of the 16th and 17th centuries were the Clouets, Cousin, Vouet, Philippe de Champaigne, Rigaud and Vanloo. French portraiture, long inflated and artificial, reached the height of pomposity in the reigns of Louis XIV. and XV., the epoch of which the towering wig is the symbol. In the 18th and early part of the 19th centuries occur the names of Boucher, Greuze, David, Gérard and Ingres; but somehow the portraits of the French masters seldom attract and captivate in the same way as those of the Dutch and Italian painters.
Foreign artists were engaged for almost every important work in painting in England down to the days of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gainsborough. Henry VIII. employed Holbein; Queen Mary, Sir Antonio Moro; Elizabeth, Zucchero and Lucas de Heere; James I. van Somer, Cornelius Janssens and Daniel Mytens; Charles I. Rubens, Van Dyck, Mytens, Petitot, Honthorst and others; and Charles II., Lely and Kneller, although there were native artists of merit, among them Dobson, Walker and Jarnesone, a Scottish painter. Puritan England and Presbyterian Scotland did little to encourage the portrait painter. The attitude of the latter towards it may be inferred from an entry in the diary of Sir Thomas Hope, the Scottish Lord Advocate in 1638. “This day, Friday, William Jamesone, painter (at the earnest desyr of my sone Mr Alexander) was sufferit to draw my pictur.” He does not even give the painter’s name correctly, although Jamesone at the time was a man of some note in Scotland. At the commencement of the reign of George I. art in England had sunk to about the lowest ebb. With the appearance of William Hogarth (1697–1764) the English school of painting may be said to have commenced, and in Reynolds and Gainsborough it produced two portrait painters whose works hold their own with those of the masters of the 16th and 17th centuries. Both Sir Joshua and Gainsborough are seen at their best in portraits of women and children. George Romney (1734–1802) shared with Reynolds and Gainsborough the patronage of the wealthy and fashionable of his day. Many of his female portraits are of great beauty. For some unknown reason he never exhibited his works in the Royal Academy.
Sir Henry Raeburn (1756–1823) was a native of Edinburgh, and spent most of his life there. His portraits are broad and effective in treatment, masterly and swift in execution and often fine in colour, He painted nearly all the distinguished Scotsmen of his time—Walter Scott, Adam Smith, Braxfield, Robertson the historian, Dugald Stewart, Boswell, Jeffrey, Professor Wilson and many of the leading noblemen, lairds, clergy and their wives and daughters. For a considerable period his portraits were little known out of Scotland, but they are now much sought after, and fine examples appearing in London sale-rooms bring remarkable prices. Raeburn’s immediate successor in Scotland, J. Watson Gordon (1788–1864), also painted many excellent portraits, chiefly of men. A very characteristic example of his art at its best may be seen in his “Provost of Peterhead” in the Scottish National Gallery. Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769–1850) was the favourite English portrait painter of his time, and had an almost unrivalled career. He had an immense practice, and between the years 1787 and 1839 exhibited upwards of three hundred portraits in the Royal Academy alone. The Waterloo Gallery at Windsor contains some of his best work, chiefly painted in 1818–1819, including his portraits of the emperor Francis, Pope Pius{{EB1911 Page Heading| |VII. and Cardinal Gonsalvi. He was loaded with honours, and died President of the Royal Academy.
Sir J. E. Millais (1829–1896), although most widely known as a painter of figure subjects, achieved some of his greatest successes in portraiture, and no artist in recent years has approached him as a painter of children. His portraits of Gladstone, Sir James Paget, Sir Gilbert Greenall, Simon Fraser, J. C. Hook and Mrs. Bischoffsheim, to name only a few, are alone sufficient to give him a high place among British portrait painters. Frank Holl (1845–1888) first came into note as a portrait painter in 1878, and during the subsequent nine years of his life he painted upwards of one hundred and ninety-eight portraits, an average of over twenty-two a year. The strain, however, proved too great for a naturally delicate constitution, and he died at the age of forty-three—another instance of a brilliant career prematurely cut short. To G. F. Watts (1820–1904) we are indebted for admirable portraits of many of the leading men of the Victorian era in politics, science, literature, theology and art. Among more recent artists, Sir W. Q. Orchardson (1835–1910), like Millais more widely known as a painter of figure subjects, but also admirable as a portrait painter; John Sargent (1856–), whose brilliant and vigorous characterization of his sitters leaves him without a rival; as Well as Ouless, Shannon, Fildes, Herkomer and others, have worthily carried on the best traditions of the art.
In France contemporary portraiture is ably represented in the works of Carolus-Duran, Bonnat and Benjamin Constant, and in Germany by Lenbach, who has handed down to posterity with uncompromising faithfulness the form and features of Prince Bismarck.
Of portraiture in its other developments little need be said. Miniature painting, which grew out of the work of the illuminator, appears to have been always successfully practised in England.. The works of Hilliard, Isaac and Peter Oliver, Samuel Cooper, Hoskins, Engleheart, Plimer and Cosway hold their own with the best of the kind; but this beautiful art, like that of the engraver, has been largely superseded by photography and the “processes” now in use.
It is unnecessary to refer to the many uses of portraiture, but one of its chiefest has been to transmit to posterity the form and features of those who have played a part, worthy or otherwise, in the past history of our race. Of its value to the
