Project 3 – portraits in interiors

From my investigations, many portraits focus on the person rather than the interior and many interiors only include people as peripheral e.g. for scale.

Figure 1: Harold Gilman 1916/17 Interior with Mrs Mounter, The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford https://www.apollo-magazine.com/harold-gilman-cuts-a-dash/

Meaningful portraits with meaningful interiors seem to use the interiors to show status/wealth, expertise (e.g. Dutch 18c picture such as Figure 2 and the Monet atelier Figure 4), location (e.g. Gaugin’s pictures in Tahiti Figure 3), favourite thing/place (e.g. my house), emotional context (cosy, powerful e.g. the emotion in Picasso Figure 7), or to convey a visual effect (depth, emotion, colour contrast etc e.g. the depth and limited palette in Figure 5 and colour contrasts in Figure 6). Of course, all the following paintings use their interiors for many of the above reasons at once.

Figure 2: Cornelius de Mann 1700 Portrait of the Pharmacist Dr Ysbrand Ysbrandsz in an interior https://museum.cornell.edu/exhibitions/eye-detail-dutch-painting-leiden-collection

Here, the interior gives perspective to the pose of the portrait which shows the pharmacist writing (a prescription or paper?) and surrounded by the tools of his trade and objects demonstrating his wide interests (music, geography etc). The interior is painted in muted browns and warm colours so that the face and some of the books, stand out in the composition. The colour range may be trying to enhance a safe, secure, comfortable impression, in common with the relaxed pose of the sitter. The composition has strong verticals and horizontals with the figure in the right hand third and the table nearly central vertical.

Figure 3: Paul Gaugin 1896 The Birth https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Birth_-_Te_tamari_no_atua_Paul_Gauguin_1896.jpg

Gaugin is expressing the emotion of, what appears to be, a successful and peaceful birth. The interior is both exotic and stable-like – perhaps supposed to echo Jesus’ birth. The very relaxed cat and cow enhance the feeling of peacefulness. The colours are used to highlight the figure of the mother against the bright bedspread, whereas everything else is painted in dull warm tones. The interior alo provides a sense of depth and distance.

Figure 4: Claude Monet 1884 self-portrait in his Atelier https://www.wikiart.org/en/claude-monet/self-portrait-in-his-atelier

This unfinished work by Monet is highly expressive and shows us that here is an artist seated in a contemplative pose and framed by his framed pictures. The pictures provide depth as they are obviously behind the figure and one is behind the other, but the main sense of depth is provided by the strong light and shade on the face. The colours of the surroundings are muted and relatively dull compared to the higher chroma and detail of the figure and face.

Figure 5: Lucien Freud 1998 Large Interior Notting Hill http://lucianfreud.com/lucian-freud-archive---paintings-1998-to-1999.html

This picture was supposed to be of Jerry Hall breastfeeding her baby but she missed one (of many) sittings through illness and Freud angrily replaced her face with that of his assistant David Dawson. I the foreground, Wyndham is reading. The interior enhances the exaggerated proportions of the figures and places them in two separate worlds. The perspective and lines of the floor give a kind of queezy shifting sense of motion to the picture. Again, the whole aura is peaceful (including the dog) and the sun streaming through the far window is very like some 18 th C Dutch interiors where the viewer feels like they are walking through to the far distance.

Figure 6: David Hockney 1971 Mr and Mrs Clarke and Percy https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hockney-mr-and-mrs-clark-and-percy-t01269

Figure 7: Pablo Picasso 1950 Drawing woman surrounded by her children http://art-picasso.com/1950_2.html

Figure 8: Hockney 1968 American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman) https://www.artic.edu/artworks/102234/american-collectors-fred-and-marcia-weisman?q=American+Collectors+%28Fred+and+Marcia+Weisman%29