About The Percivals

The Glencore Percival Portrait Painting Prize is a nationally recognised portrait competition which offers a $40,000 acquisitive major prize awarded by major sponsor Glencore and Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Gallery Services, Townsville City Council. The Prize was established in 2007, after negotiations to tour the Archibald stalled in 2006, and has continued to grow in the number of entries submitted, prize money and national recognition. Entries are open to all local, interstate and international artists. Eligible media for entries include oil, acrylic, watercolour, pastel, charcoal, ink and/or mixed media.

The DUO Magazine Percival Photographic Portrait Prize at Pinnacles Gallery coincides with the Glencore Percival Portrait Painting Prize. This marks the inaugural year for the DUO Magazine Percival Photographic Portrait Prize which expands The Percivals to now include entries in all forms of still photography. The major acquisitive prize of $10,000 is awarded by DUO Magazine and Pinnacles Gallery, Gallery Services, Townsville City Council.

Portraiture as a Genre

Portraiture is defined as the recording of an individual or group where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject/s, often human, through painting, photographs, sculpture and various other art forms and mediums. It aims to capture an identity rather than a mere image of the subject whilst reflecting the interchange of perception between the subject and artist; foregrounding the style and skill of the artist. Attire, composition and the sitter’s position all play pivotal roles in capturing the essence and personal identity of the subject.

The roots of portraiture likely date back as far as the Late Stone Age (more than 25,000 years ago) with depictions of gods and deities. Egyptian and other ancient civilisations of the Fertile Crescent depicted gods and rulers, however most of these were highly stylised and placed little emphasis on likeness. In ancient China, portraits of rulers from about 1,000 B.C. are recorded, however none are thought to survive.

Portraiture flourished particularly in the classical world. Ancient Greek and Roman civilisations produced portraits on coins and marble busts with emphasis on realism. Examples of this style can be found in funerary portraits, frescos, coins and sculptures of the period.

In South America, the Moche culture of Peru produced portraits which paid great attention to anatomical details so that the subjects of the portrait are easily recognisable.

The Renaissance marked a watershed moment in the history of portraiture with art reaching new levels of insight and balance. In Northern Europe, painters began depicting subjects from different perspectives, and in doing developed new levels of depth and realism, for example in Portrait of Sir Thomas More (1527) by Hans Holbein the Younger.

Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Marriage (1434) was another landmark work in western art with its original style and iconography, the reflection in the mirror, the painting’s composition and the use of painting as a ‘proof of marriage contract’ all being significant. Furthermore, the sitters are painted in a full length portrait.

Probably the best known example of portraiture from this period is the Mona Lisa, painted by Leonardo da Vinci (c.1503 – 1506). This painting is commonly thought to be a depiction of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of cloth and silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Curiously, the smile that has intrigued viewers for generations is an example of the subtle application of asymmetry to the face. Well known portrait artists during this period include Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein the Younger, Jan van Eyck, Michelangelo, Giovanni Bellini, Sandro Botticelli, El Greco and Jean Clouet among others.

During the Baroque and Rococo periods portraiture became even more established, especially as a declaration of status. These periods saw the emergence of group portraiture and an increased exploration of the emotions of the human face, something made possible by the new advances and understandings gained during the Renaissance and also the improvement in the quality of oil paints, especially the increased drying time.

This period not only marked the affirmation of power and status through portraiture of some of the more powerful figures in the world, but also the painting of the middle and lower classes. Notable examples of this are Rembrandt and Vermeer.

Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck , Jan Brueghel the Elder, Diego Velázquez and Nicolas Poussin are well-known artists from this period.

Rococo artists reveled in the articulate rendering of their subjects, especially in reproducing on canvas all the finery of a subject’s wealth and opulence. This period saw the refining and mastery of painting textures of materials and objects.

Famous Rococo artists include Jean-Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Thomas Gainsborough, Élisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, William Hogarth, John Singleton Copley, and Joshua Reynolds.

The 19th century saw portraiture change as quickly as the art movements did, from Classicism where portraits showcased the sitters in the latest fashions or depicted them in classical settings with Greek and Roman attire, through to Romanticism where lively brush strokes and use of dramatic lighting illustrated soldiers, politicians, ladies of court and mental patients in dramatic or heroic moments, in agitated states or simply at leisure. Painters such as Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Eugène Delacroix, Théodore Géricault, Francisco de Goya and Girodet are synonymous with these art movements.

Realist artists such as Jean-François Millet, Gustave Courbet, Honoré Daumier, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, John Singer Sargent, Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas explored the lives and times of the middle and lower classes, painting them at work in the fields, the theatres and at home. Realism works have a frankness and honesty laying bare the drudgery of everyday life for most individuals, a marked demarcation from the opulence of previous styles such as Rococo.

Impressionism and Post-Impressionism followed with artists such as Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Matisse and Mary Stevenson Cassatt. Portraits by these artists were often of friends and family as opposed to individuals of status. Artists such as Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh are celebrated for their self-portraits from this period.

During the 19th century, Romantic painter and physicist Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre created the daguerreotype to which he could permanently capture an image – ultimately the birth of photography. The relatively low cost and minimal exposure time for sitters led to increased use of photography as a medium for portraiture.

Photography was used by artists such as Degas and also had a profound impact on portraiture painting, prompting artists to interpret portraiture renewed and differently to how a photographic artist might.

During the 20th century, Modernist artists expanded the genre of portraiture in many directions, experimenting with non-naturalistic and distorted styles of portraits, departing from more traditional portraiture techniques.

Artists such as Otto Dix, Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, Gustav Klimt, Henri Matisse and Piet Mondrian pushed portraiture in this direction. Conversely, artists such as George Wesley Bellows, Abram Arkhipov, and Edward Hopper advanced portraiture through figurative styles, especially those of realism and humanism.

With the end of Modernism and the beginnings of Post-Modernism, there was a resurgence of portraiture as artists such as Andy Warhol, Lucian Freud and Chuck Close were influenced by, and influential in developing, new movements such as Pop, PostExpressionism and Hyper-Realism. This opened up a new realm for artistic expression through photographic, selfphotographic and ‘selfie’ portraiturederivatives.

Photographic portraiture revolutionised the realm of traditional portraiture not only as a medium of artistic expression but also as an exploration of technical elements such as adjusting and capturing light. Advances in photographic technology and equipment in the contemporary world and popular culture has encouraged a resurgence of portraiture, often as an indirect or conceptual approach.

Notable artists from this period include Vivian Maier, The Satorialist, Cecil Beaton, Yousuf Karsh, Annie Leibowitz and Petrina Hicks, among others.

The ‘selfie’ has emerged in modern times as a new genre of instantaneous self-portraiture where the subject is the photographer and the sitter, capturing an image that is often uploaded to social networking websites. ‘Selfies’ have become a modern phenomenon and strictly speaking are a digital affair, recently experiencing a meteoric rise following the release of the front facing camera within smart phones.

Key terms: portraiture, self-portrait, photographic portraiture, painting, photography, subject, sitter, personal identity, Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, Classicism, Modernism, Post-Modernism, Pop, Realism, Humanism, Hyper-Realism, figurative, Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Daguerreotype, Brownie127, Eastman Kodak, social network

Questions

1. Look at the sitters in paintings from the Renaissance era, and the sitters in paintings from the Post-Impressionist era. Contrast the sitters. What differences do you note? Are they from the same class of people?

2. What effect/s did the invention of the camera have on portraiture?

3. How might the time period in which an artwork was created affect the style and visual aesthetic of the portrait?

Suggested activity

1. Create a timeline of portraiture using one example from each major period.

2. Design a coin using a profile portrait.

3. Use the activity provided on page 13 and research one art movement, paying particular attention to the devices used.