portraits of themselves:
What resource will be left to the history painter if he is not in a position to feed his family on more
solid fare than glory? He will sacrifice his personal tastes and natural talents to his needs, in order not
to see his fortunes waning, despite his skill and efforts, in contrast to the rapid financial gains made by
his colleagues the portrait painters, especially those working in pastel. He will suppress his inner
callings and divert his brush from the path of glory to follow that of material wellbeing. He will, in
all honesty, suffer for a time to see himself forced to flatter a simpering, often misshapen or aged face,
which almost always, lacks physiognomy; reproducing obscure, characterless people, without name,
without position, without merit....
(cited in Harrison, Wood and Gaiger, 2000, 559; see also Wrigley, 1993, 304–305)In the same year, 1747, the Director of Public Buildings, Le Normand de Tournehem, reduced the prices
to be paid for portraits and regulated those of history paintings on a sliding scale determined by their size.
This initiative proved unpopular with portrait painters (Conisbee, 1981, 77).
As La Font de Saint Yenne’s comment suggests, the status of a portrait was affected in part by that of its
sitter, ranging from royal subjects (whose portraits often “starred” in public exhibitions) to wealthy
financiers and more modest subjects from the worlds of commerce and the professions. It became more
common for writers, actors, politicians and artists themselves to have their portraits painted (Retford,
2006, 7). The association of portraiture with vanity often led to claims that it was a feminine vice and that
its influence spread particularly effectively through a sordidly mercantile (i.e.nonaristocratic, market
based) culture, especially in Britain (Kriz, 2001, 61). The formats or portraits helped to determine their
status, with those reproduced on broadsheets, snuff boxes or trade cards regarded as utilitarian or
decorative rather than examples of fine art (Pointon, 1993, 84). Portraits could be turned into prints (those
of Kauffman and Reynolds were very popular in this form; Hallett, 2014, 120–123) or applied to ceramic
jugs, paste plaques, signs and even wallpaper designs (Pointon, 2001, 98). The status of portraiture was
generally considered lower than that of history painting because there was a popular perception that it
involved “mere copying” rather than erudition or imaginative transformation, although as we shall see,
there are problems with this view of any work of art.
The term portrait derived from the French phrase “trait pour trait” (literally “line for line”), which
placed emphasis on copying or producing an accurate physical likeness. This aspect of portraiture had
legendary force due to the description of Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE), in his Natural History of the origin
of painting and sculpted portrait reliefs. He identified this as the occasion (in around 600 BCE) on which
the daughter of the ancient Greek artisan and tilemaker Butades of Sicyon traced on a wall the shadow
of her young lover, who was about to set out on a journey. Her father subsequently pressed clay into the
outlined shape so that he could make a portrait relief. The story is captured in Suvée’s The Invention of
Drawing (L’Invention du dessin) (1791) (Figure 2.5). It is widely acknowledged today, however, that in
the great periods of portrait production, including the eighteenth century, both artists and sitters were
motivated by concerns extending well beyond the pragmatic requirement of a physical likeness.