Portarait Painting

Portrait painting.

Horatio once said: A picture is a poem without words . Really, a painting can speak loudly than thousand words. A painting is the most effective exhibition of one’s idea about a particular concept or material. A great painting enriches our experience of life, just as a great poem does, since great painters make us see and think a great deal more than the objects before us, they teach us to look at a scene through their eyes, their imagination. It can explain a story which will take several pages if it is explained in words. Today I’d like to draw your attention to portrait painting. At first, I’m to present the definition of this genre of painting, than I’m to speak on three artists William Hogarth, Mary Cassat and Valentin Serov as the representatives of three different movements in portrait painting. As Britannica says Portrait painting is a genre of painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait. Portraitists create their work by commission, or are inspired by admiration or affection for the subject. Historically, portrait paintings have primarily memorialized the rich and powerful. Today, the portrait painting is still commissioned by governments, corporations, groups, clubs, and individuals. As you can know there are a lot of movements in painting in general and in portrait painting in particular. They range from realism to pop-art, but I’m to single out realism, impressionism and modernism. The movement of realism is based on the exact reflection of human face and body. Clear and exact lines, realistic colours are typical of it. The representative of this movement is William Hogarth. He is considered even one of the founders of realistic movement in Britain. Hogarth emerged as an important portraitist, producing several impressive small-scale informal group portraits of members of a family