Portraits: A History [Hardcover]

Andreas Beyer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2003

This volume presents the history of portrait painting in the Western world, starting with its roots in ancient art and focusing on its flowering as an autonomous genre beginning in the 15th century. Works feature in the book represent all types of portraiture - individual and group portraits, official and casual settings, subjects both famous and anonymous, renderings of friends, family and the artists themselves. Masters of portraiture - including Van Eyck, Leonardo, Raphael, Hals, Rembrandt, Holbein, Gainsborough, Velasquez, Sargent and many others - are all represented, as a more recent practitioners of the genre such as Picasso, Chuck Close and Gerhard Richter. Nearly 300 major paintings from collections throughout the world are presented in full-page reproductions, while informative details highlight certain aspects of the paintings, providing insight into the painters' techniques.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

From lavish portraits of kings and queens filled with symbols of wealth and prosperity, to erotically charged portraits of mistresses and lost loves, to searching and poignant artist self-portraits, German art historian Beyer traces a "panoramic history" of the art of portraiture, accompanied by fine reproductions and numerous close-up details. Since, as the author says, "there is in fact no real theory of the portrait," he attempts to remedy that lapse: innovations in portraiture are linked to innovations in painting generally, and Beyer stresses the fact that the effort to represent a human being in art very much addresses the centuries-old question of the role of art in life. Did the portrait artist capture the "essence" of the person portrayed, or did they also paint in idealized human features in order to link the portrait to classical, or divine subjects? Does the essence of a person involve precise reproduction of facial features, like a photocopy, or, as in Imi Knoebel's abstract "portrait" of four women, can that essence be represented by colored rectangles? At times, these questions sparked such agitation that, as in the case of Goya's portrait of the duchess of Alba, a suspected subject of a portrait could be exhumed years after his or her death to be compared to the painting. Beyer includes most of the famous portraits, including the Mona Lisa, among the 290, somewhat dark color reproductions here (including many 11" 13" full-bleeds); some lesser-known portraits could have happily been substituted for multiple close-ups of the masterpieces. When Beyer discusses the importance of Rembrandt's lifelong series of self-portraits, for instance, he only includes one early and one late self-portrait. And while the text is chronological, it does not provide clear overviews of regional trends, themes, or schools. Nevertheless, Beyer's thoughtful and original scholarship does much to establish portraiture as a worthy and compelling subject.
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About the Author

Andreas Beyer is chair of the art history department at the Rheinische Westfalische Technische Hochschule in Aachen, Germany, and is widely considered one of the leading German art historians of his generation. Beyer has had fellowships at the Clark Institute in Williamstown, Mass.; the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery in Washington; and at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He is currently co-editor of the Deutsche Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte, the leading German-language scholarly journal in the discipline.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Harry N. Abrams; 1ST edition (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810945398
• ISBN-13: 978-0810945395
• Product Dimensions: 13.1 x 11.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,587,285 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful book, October 6, 2005

By 

floyd "art instructor" (urbana il) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Portraits: A History (Hardcover)

I'm an artist and professor, and I've bought this book for myself and as a gift. It would be great if there were a few more contemporary portraits, but the book is what it is: a fantastic survey from antiquity to the 20th century. It has some paintings that one doesn't see too often, from painters that artists love and the public doesn't know very well, like Fantin-Latour. Anyway, I think it's one of the best two portrait surveys I've ever seen. Andreas Beyer knows what he's doing.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb quality of illustrations, August 22, 2009

By 

Laudanum (New York, NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Portraits: A History (Hardcover)

I own a good deal of art books and this one is one of the favourites of my collecton. The quality of full-page colour artwork is amazing.
The text is arguably idiosyncratic and misses much of the heraldic aspects of early portrature but still interesting to read.
This book is heavy, the quality of paper is very nice and it makes a great gift.

4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars unsatisfied, July 28, 2005

By 

Karen B. Mortensen "K. Mortensen" - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Portraits: A History (Hardcover)

I'm very sorry but I did not like this book at all and sent it back immidiately. I guess I expected a lot of visuals of many different artist's portraits includidng contemporaries. I think perhaps it was only my expectations of something else which caused me to find this book unsatisfactory.