Since the sixteenth century portraiture has found its chief expression in painting. Even dur ing the decline of the Italian and other schools, portraiture remained comparatively good, because in it the artist is compelled to adhere to nature. With the great development of painting in the seventeenth century portraiture assumed a new importance, especially in the schools which at tained the highest development, namely those of the Netherlands and of Spain, In Holland Rem brandt, by the skillful manipulation of light and shade and by skillful coloring, achieved highly realistic and characteristic results. Frans Bats. whose activity was confined to portrait painting, portrayed his figures in full light, and with genial observation: while Van der Heist and many oth ers did good work in portraiture. This school developed the group picture. and heightened the effect of the portrait by an appropriate back ground. The work of the Flemish school repre sents a. modification of the purely realistic con ception by 'Italian refinement of color. ,Ruhens's portraits were of wonderful strength and charac terization, while Van Dyke's were of a more re fined and courtly character. In Spain portrai ture attained the highest possible development in the works of Velasquez, who with the subtle in tellectual observation and the highest technique portrayed the Spanish grandees from the stand point of absolute realism. During the same period portraiture of good. though a more artifi cial character. was practiced by the Eclectic schools, in Italy, and by the courtly painters of France.
Although the eighteenth century was an age of decline in painting, portraiture found in France a characteristic, realistic expression in the works of the sculptors. like Houdon, and in the work of the great portrait-engravers like Nanteuil and Edelinck. In England an art of a realistic char acter flourished in the portraits of Reynolds, Gainsborough, Lawrence. and in those of Raebu•n in Scotland. Portraiture has always been greatly in demand in England in aristocratic and court circles, and the greatest painters there have usually been portraitists.
During the nineteenth century the demand for portraits by no means decreased, and nearly all of the great figru•e painters have also been por traitists. In France Classicists, Realists, and Impressionists, have all contributed their quota to the evolution of the portrait, and to mention the names of those who have done good portrai ture would he to enumerate the great figure paint ers of France. In the opinion of modern critics
the portraits of classicists like David, Gerard, and Ingres are their very best work; at the pres ent day Bonnat, Carolus Duran, and Benjamin Constant are most universally 1.710WD. In Ger many portraiture has been less productive, but Lenbach, whose coloristic is based upon that of the old masters, has done some of the best por traiture of the century. During the last half of the nineteenth century England has produced a series of good portrait painters in Herko mer, G. F. Watts, and Orehardson. English sculpture (q.v.) has succeeded best in portraiture while in France the portrait work of men like Rodin and Falguiere is the very highest of its kind. Portraiture in medallions, which even at the time of the Renaissance, was prominent iu French art, has achieved a very high development in the nineteenth century in the work of David d'Angers, Roty, Chaplain, Vernon.
The earliest American portraitists of the col onial and revolutionary periods like Copley, Trumbull, and Sully, resemble eontempoty Eng lish painters in their eclectic manner, except Gilbert Stuart, who occasionally did work of a, high order. Men of the middle period (see I' kINTI NG ) were Harding, Healy, Huntington. and Page and Eastman Johnston. In recent years America has produced a number of portraitists of exceptional ability, trained. for the most part, in 1•'rance. Whistler's refined likenesses may be compared to those of Velazquez; Sargent. bril liant. modern, and realistic, will bear comparison with any living portraitist; and among many others doing excellent work may he mentioned. Chase, Melehers, and Cecilia Beaux. Portrait statuary has achieved equally great results in the works of Saint Gaudens, Maemonnies, Bart lett, and others. See BrSTS for the development of this important branch of sculpture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. For antique portraiture conBibliography. For antique portraiture con- sult the articles referred to under ICONOGRAPHY. See also Von Seidlitz. lloctar-ine peschiehtliehe Pwrtrdtu•crkc (Munich, 1S95); and the works of Marquet de Vasselot (Paris, 1930), and Pinset and d'Auriac (ib., 1894) entitled Histoire (ha por trait en France.