Why choose an oil portrait over a professionally done photo

[SB Wang]

"She argued that while a photo is about an instant that will never repeat itself (even in a posed photograph photographers often look for that sudden twinkle), never come back, so it is ultimately about death (that is maybe something you don't want to tell a client) while a portrait develops during a span of time, so it is rather like life."

Arms to arms, no glass (of death)...
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/magritte/magritte49.html

Play magic:
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/magritte/magritte37.html

Impressionistic...
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/morisot/morisot14.html

[Michele Rushworth]

It's my feeling that either a person already understands that a painting is not the same thing as a photograph (and that you're not competing with photographers) or they never will. I think that no amount of explaining from the artist will turn a prospect who is considering a photo into a prospect who will pay the difference for a commissioned portrait. Either they intuitively understand the difference, perhaps from a lifetime of exposure to art, or they don't.

[Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco]

Julie, I read that essay in the introduction to a catalog

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Portrait-Awa...7468494&sr=8-8

It's somewhere in my home but I just couldn't find it, I will be happy to scan it for you when it turns up

[David Draime]

Originally Posted by Michele Rushworth

I think that no amount of explaining from the artist will turn a prospect who is considering a photo into a prospect who will pay the difference for a commissioned portrait. Either they intuitively understand the difference, perhaps from a lifetime of exposure to art, or they don't.

As an art teacher, I even get this - all the time: "Wow, that looks just like a picture!"

....sigh.

David

[Richard Bingham]

I think 1839 was the year Louis Daguerre made discriminating between painted portraits and photographs an issue of concern for "artists". For nearly 170 years, painted images have been more or less redundant, at least technologically.

Some aesthetes would dismiss portraiture from the realm of "high art" just as they do "mere illustration". Anything hinting of the utilitarian just has to be suspect! To the extent that painted images may be as superficial as snapshots, I'd have to agree. For the certainty that emotional depth can be recorded in paint and is therefore timeless, one might look to Velasquez' Juan de Pareja (and a number of others) for assurance.

For my part, a "good portrait" is one that communicates to the viewer truths about the subject that are the result of psychological interaction between artist and sitter during the process of creation. Some photographs are capable of it; many paintings, unfortunately, are not.

A painter working from the life has a tremendous advantage over the photographer, whose moment in time must encapsulate instantaneously what the painter can observe and absorb through an extended sitting.