Powerful Portraits

Artworks that focus on a person or animal are often called portraits. Artists create portraits for many reasons. Sometimes, depictions of people and animals are used to tell the story of a figure or to capture an important moment. On this field trip, we invite you to explore five artworks from the Saint Louis Art Museum’s collection to uncover artistic choices in portraiture and even make a few artistic decisions of your own!

You are welcome to move through these works of art in any order you choose. As you visit each artwork, you will find questions and activities to help you explore further. You can also visit the Create Space at the bottom of the page for an art-making project to try on your own.

Before you begin, you will need to gather something that you can draw or write on—such as a notebook, whiteboard, or tablet—and a pen, pencil, or other writing tool.  

Let’s explore portraits!

Before the invention of photography, portraits were painted, sculpted, and drawn. This was the only way to save or document someone’s appearance. Many portraits were also created for more than recordkeeping. Artists were hired to capture important qualities of their sitters, including their power, beauty, and wealth. A sitter is the focus of a portrait. The sitter stays in a pose for a period of time so the artist can study and create their likeness.

Let’s learn more about creating a portrait by looking very closely at a sculpture by Edmonia Lewis titled Portrait of a Woman. 

Write an Autobiography Poem that could accompany your sculpture.
(Follow the format below)

Format
First name
Title for yourself
Four words to describe yourself
Lover of (insert three ideas, objects, or items)
Who believes (one idea or concept)
Who wants (insert three things)
Who uses (insert three things)
Who gives (insert three things)
Who says (insert a quote)
Last name

Example:
Skylar 
Third grade gymnast 
Smart, creative, funny, kind 
Lover of dolls, chocolate, drawing 
Who believes everyone should be kind 
Who wants vacations, recess, candy 
Who uses paint, rocks, fingernail polish 
Who gives hugs, food, smiles 
Who says “Love you, friend” 
Cox 

There are times when portraits appear in artworks to celebrate a person’s life or story. A portrait may focus on how an event, action, or aspect of a person’s life has impacted others. A sculpture or other type of portrait that resembles a person can serve as a way to learn about someone’s life for many generations.

Imagine if a bust, like Portrait of a Woman by Edmonia Lewis, was sculpted to celebrate someone close to you.

• Who would you choose?
• Where would you display the sculpture?

Select one or more questions from the list below. These questions may help you choose a special person and decide what details you might include in their portrait.

1. Who do I learn from the most?

2. how do they show kindness?

3. What are three things that make them unique? Why?

4. What is one thing I want others to know about them?

5. What always makes them smile?

Human beings express a wide range of emotions or feelings. Facial expressions are physical changes that happen by shifting your eyebrows, eyes, or mouth to indicate how you feel. Some examples include smiles when happy, raised eyebrows when surprised, or downturned lips when sad.

Spend one minute looking at the artwork below to explore how portraits can express emotion.

Examining poses can help provide clues about a figure in an artwork. The way a person appears within a particular space can reveal details about a person’s mood, lifestyle, hobbies, or profession. Let’s look at this painting, Charles I by Daniel Mytens, to explore the power of a pose.

In this contemporary painting by Kehinde Wiley, also titled Charles I, the artist asked the sitter to imitate the pose found in Mytens’s Charles I painting. Take a few minutes to examine and compare the two paintings using the slider feature below.

What similarities Can you find?

What differences do you notice?

Draw a line down the center of a piece of paper. On one side of the line, list the similarities. On the opposite side, list the differences between the two portraits.

Have you ever found a collection of items and wondered who they belonged to? Sometimes we can learn about one another by observing a person’s belongings. They can reveal a person’s age, hobbies, fashion, habits, and more. For example, a ball, water bottle, and pair of sneakers might belong to an athlete, while sheet music and an instrument may belong to a musician. Let’s test our detective skills by looking closely at Portrait of a Man.

Pretend you are a detective. Let your eyes collect as much information as you can while you look closely at the objects in the picture. What ideas are you uncovering? Are any themes emerging?

This artwork is creating a portrait without revealing its subject’s face. What can you predict about the person it depicts? Using the character worksheet, imagine the person who owns these items walks into the same room as you. On the worksheet below, use your imagination to describe the person’s name, occupation, hobbies, and more. Examine the picture for hints and ideas. Have fun and be creative!

Experiment with making a photogram. A photogram is a cameraless photographic image made by placing objects directly onto a light-sensitive material, such as photographic paper, and then exposing it to UV light or sunlight. The technique creates a negative image. Once you complete the light exposure and immerse the special light-sensitive paper in water, areas of the paper that have received no light appear white, and areas exposed to light for a shorter amount of time (or that are covered by transparent objects) appear gray. All fully exposed areas (portions of the paper that receive full light) appear black or as a solid color in the final print. To learn how to make a photogram using natural light, watch this video.

Artists make many decisions when creating a portrait, whether it is a photograph, painting, sculpture, or video. They often consider composition, or the artistic arrangement of people and other elements in the image. This may include selecting people, objects, animals, lighting, location, and more. These decisions are made before and even during the making process.

Imagine you are an artist. After viewing Portrait of Onchi Kōshirō, you are inspired to create a portrait of your own. You have a camera in your hands, and you are ready for a day of collecting images. Now it is your turn to make all of the artistic decisions.

Write or draw a plan for a day of photography.

• Who would you like to photograph?
• What locations would you explore?
• What supplies would you carry?
• What story do you want to tell?