'It's not just a big selfie': Inside the unexpected revival of old-school painted portraits

In an age of disposal photography, sitting for a portrait is making a comeback

Paradoxically, the smartphone age, with its constant picture-taking, has revived portrait painting – for the right budget. Alamy

It was, concedes Claudia Fisher, a lot of money to spend. “I’d never spent that kind of money on something before,” says the American creative director of women’s tailoring brand Belle Brummell. “But I have something unique that gives me a lot of joy, and I have supported the art form and that’s important.”

Indeed, Fisher’s Dh98,000 ($26,700) outlay went to having her portrait painted by celebrated portraitist Paul Brason, who counts leading industrialists, academics and the British royal family’s late Prince Philip among his subjects.

“I just loved the way he could render fabric so exquisitely, giving his paintings an old master quality, even if the painting now just hangs in my house,” says Fisher. “It’s fun to say ‘hi’ to it once in a while.”

A ‘double’ portrait of former V&A director Roy Strong by British portraitist Paul Brason. Photo: Paul Brason

Fisher is not alone. Both the Portrait Society of America and the UK’s Royal Society of Portrait Painters – the two most august institutions of portrait painting, which not only promote portraiture, but also operate commissioning services that connect artists and subjects – report healthy demand.

If one might worry that the smartphone age – which has made the constant taking of pictures almost compulsive – would kill off portrait painting, it seems the reverse is the case.

“Portraiture is quite a big business within the art world, really, even if it is often portrayed as being rather traditional, in the sense of being concerned with old ideas of beauty in art,” says Anthony Connolly, president of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.

“And while a lot of institutions still commission portraits – the church, military, academia, corporations, heads of state and so on – portraiture is changing dramatically from the idea that it’s an elitist thing to do. Now, it’s more just a culture of people painting people.”

Dubai-based artist Columbus Onuoha uses digital photography to capture striking detail in his oil portraits – freeing him from the sitter’s schedule. Photo: Onucha Columbus

Connolly argues that while a portrait is definitely a luxury item, for a one-off work by a highly skilled individual, and for something that will last generations, it can nonetheless represent very good value, “especially if you put it in the context of another bespoke item, the likes of a Savile Row suit”.

Besides, portrait painters run the gamut as much in their price – from as little as Dh2,000 to much, much more – as they do in their style.

Dubai artist Suzi Nassif, for example, creates portraits in surrealistic, sometimes cubist styles, with her subjects expressed more through unexpected colours and symbolism than an accurate likeness.

“They’re imaginative portraits, more as I see them and not necessarily as the subjects might see themselves,” says Nassif, who, once she has got to know her subject, prefers to then work from memory. “The power of the portrait is to examine the psyche behind the mask, and to do that I think it makes sense to use all the creative tools available to the painter.”

Artist Frances Bell paints Andrew Festing in his Northumberland studio, capturing the celebrated portraitist in his signature green Bentley overalls. Alamy

Certainly, while for an artist who prefers to work in person, a portrait might require the sitter to give perhaps two to three hours of their time, maybe four or five times over several months, it’s also increasingly commonplace for artists to work in part or entirely from photographs.

For example, artist Columbus Onuoha, who also lives in Dubai, is recognised for his photorealistic portraits in oil paint. Digital photography actually helps him zoom in on the precise details that make his portraits so arresting. It also allows him to tackle the work as inspiration strikes rather than be beholden to the sitter’s schedule.

Far from being put off by having their image rendered in exquisitely unforgiving detail, “clients love the honesty of the results, the transparency”, reckons Onuoha. “Though, occasionally, people of a certain age want to be represented as a little younger than they are. But a portrait should be a record of a time of life. I tell my subjects to be proud of the age they are, though I sometimes do a self-portrait to remind myself how it feels.”

Dubai artist Suzi Nassif crafts surreal, cubist-inspired portraits that convey her subjects through bold colours and symbolism, rather than realism. Photo: Suzi Nassif / Instagram

And how does being intimately examined, and then represented in paint, feel? Connolly, who is currently having his own portrait painted, suggests that far from being a discomforting experience “it’s very convivial, intimate without being salacious and almost like a kind of meditation. You feel like you’re part of the painting process even though, of course, you’re not painting the portrait.”

Yet surely just having a photograph taken – even one by a professional – is faster and simpler? Yes, Onuoha agrees, but that is to miss the point of why people want to be painted.

He argues that, while social media has certainly helped him to build a career, it’s the very ubiquity of digital images – and the way they have democratised portraiture – that encourages many of his clients to want “something that’s handmade, tangible, and that puts them at the centre of an artistic process”, he says. “These people also tend to love art. They want to be involved.”

For those who can afford it, a commissioned one-off work from a skilled artist becomes an heirloom piece. Photo: Paul Brason

But others go further, arguing that a painted portrait simply catches what a photograph never can.

As Christine Egnoski, chief executive of the Portrait Society of America, suggests, it reveals the qualities of a person unseen by a snap, “offering the viewer a more real sense of the person’s presence, as well as the artist’s own expression. An artist adds the feeling of the person.” It explains why, she argues, 10 million people queue to look at the Mona Lisa each year, and the enduring appeal of the portrait in art, both before and since the advent of photography.

Frances Bell, portrait painter and recent winner of the Portrait Society of America’s prestigious Draper Grand Prize, puts it another way. “A painted portrait has something of the thrum of life about it, something transcendent – there’s so much life on the canvas that it can feel like a window on another, sometimes historic world,” she says.

The trend towards commissioning portraits has taken off around the world, including in the UAE. Photo: Onucha Columbus

“The artist is trying to work out who that person is – their mannerisms, how they hold themselves and so on – so the result understands something deeper than a photo can. It’s not just a big selfie, but is very personal, which is why it’s very important that a sitter pick the right painter for them.”

It’s also why, she suggests, people so often turn to this special means of representing someone not out of vanity, but to mark a special moment in their life – an important anniversary, for example, or, as more than one of Bell’s clients have done, to celebrate getting over a major illness. And why, so often, it’s not the sitter who commissions the portrait for themselves, but a partner or family member.

Sure, the result may never be hung in a gallery or a museum, but what better way to celebrate and immortalise an individual life than in paint?