06/17/2026
A few thoughts on portraiture this Wisdom Wednesday — and a question you may not have thought to ask.
Why has the human face occupied painters for as long as paint has existed?
The earliest known portraits date back nearly 5,000 years. From Egyptian funerary masks to Roman wax-encaustic mummy portraits, from Holbein's piercing Tudor courtiers to Rembrandt's quiet self-portraits painted across forty years of his own aging — portraiture has been one of art's most enduring practices. Every culture that has made paintings has eventually made paintings of faces.
What makes a portrait actually work?
Most painters who teach the craft will tell you the same thing: a successful portrait is not a photograph rendered in paint. A photograph captures a fraction of a second. A portrait holds something steadier — a person's bearing, their inner life, the way they've come to inhabit their own face after decades of using it. It's why we still go to museums to see portraits of people whose names we've forgotten. The painter caught something about being human that the photograph can't quite hold.
The technique itself is famously difficult. Tiny variations in the placement of an eye or the curve of a lip can make the difference between a likeness and a stranger. Skin tones require dozens of subtle decisions — warm shadows, cool highlights, the half-tones where the face turns away from the light. Hair has to feel like hair, not threads. The hands, in any portrait that includes them, are nearly as expressive as the face itself.
And then there's the relationship. A good portrait isn't only about the sitter. It's about the painter, too — what they noticed, what they chose to emphasize, what they decided to leave alone. Every portrait is in some quiet sense a self-portrait of the artist as well.
Over the next few days, we'll be sharing the story of one of our own working portrait painters — and the unusual journey that brought her work into a London exhibition this April.
💬 Whose portrait — in any medium, any era — has stayed with you?
Bob Dylan by Rob Trent, mouthpainter
Gordon by Cody Tresiarra, mouthpainter
Pensive by F***y Borougeious-le Boulaire, mouthpainter
Self portrait by Ruth Christensen, mouthpainter
The Girl in the Wind by Jolanta Borek Unikowska mouthpainter
Robert Plant by Rob Trent, mouthpainter
Helen by Sara Jane Parsons, mouthpainter
Mother Teressa by Jesfer Pulikkathody, mouthpainter
David Bowie by Mariam Paré, mouthpainter
Eduardo’s Science by Frederico Gattolin
