Don't look upon portraits as something any one can do. A portrait is more than a likeness, and the painting of it gives scope for all of the great qualities possible in art. Only a great painter can paint a great portrait. Some great painters rest their fame on work in this field, and others have added by this to the fame derived from other kinds of work.

You must not think it easy to paint a portrait, or rest satisfied with having got a likeness. Likeness is a very commonplace thing, which almost any one can get. If there were no other qualities to be tried for, it would hardly be worth while to paint a portrait. Back of the likeness, which a few superficial lines may give, is the character, which needs not only skill and power to express but great perception to see, and judgment to make use of to the best advantage.

Character.—The first requisite in a good portrait is character,—more than likeness, more than color or grace, before everything else, it needs this; nothing can take the place of it and make a portrait in any real sense of the word. Everything else may be added to this, and the picture be only so much the greater; but this is the fundamental beauty of the portrait. Some of the greatest painters made pictures which were very beautiful, yet the greatest beauty lay in the perception and expression of character. Holbein's wonderful work is the apotheosis of the direct, simple, sincere expression of character in the most frank and unaffected rectitude of drawing. There are masterpieces of Albrecht DÜrer which rest on the same qualities, as you can see in the Portrait of Himself by DÜrer. Likeness is incidental to character; get that, and the likeness will be there in spite of you.

Hubert Herkomer said once that he did not try for likeness; if only he got the right values in the right places, the likeness had to be there. The same can hardly be said of character, for this depends on the selection from the phases of expression which are constantly passing on the face, those which speak most of the personality of the man; and the emphasis of these to the sacrifice of others. The painting of character is interpretation of individuality through the painting of the features, and, like all interpretation, depends more on insight and selection than on representation. Try for this always. Search for it in the manner, in the pose and occupation, of your sitter. Get likeness if you will, of course; but remember that there is a petty likeness, which may be accident or not, which you can always get by a little care in drawing; and that there is a larger character which includes this, and does not depend on exaggeration of feature or emphasis of accidental lines, but on the large expressiveness of the individual. You may find it elsewhere than in the face. The character affects the whole movement of the man. The set of the head and the great lines of the face, the head and shoulders alone would give it to you even if the features were left out. Study to see this, and to express it first, and then put in as much detail as you see fit, only taking care never to lose the main thing in getting those details.

Qualities.—There are other great qualities also which you can get in a portrait. All the qualities of color and tone, of course. But the simplicity of a single figure does not preclude the qualities of line and mass. The great things to be done with composition may as well be done in portrait as elsewhere. If you would see what may be done with a single figure, study the Portrait of his Mother, by Whistler. You could not have a better example. It is one of the greatest portraits of the world. Notice the character which is shown in every line and plane in the figure. The very pose speaks of the individuality. Notice the grace and repose of line, and the relations of mass to mass and space—the proportion. See how quiet it is and simple, yet how just and true. Of the color you cannot judge in a black and white, but you can see the relations of tones, the values and the drawing. It is these things which make a picture; not only a portrait, but a great work of art as well.

Drawing.—Good work in portraiture depends on good drawing, just as other work does. Don't think that because it is only a head you can make it more easily than anything else. As in other kinds of work, the drawing you should try for is the drawing of the proportions and characteristic lines. Get the masses and the more important planes, and don't try for details. You can get these afterwards, or leave them out altogether, and they will not be missed if your work has been well done.

Don't undertake too much in your work. Make up your mind how much you can do well, and don't be too ambitious; the best painters who ever lived have been content to work on a head and shoulders, and have made masterpieces of such paintings. You may be content also. See how little Velasquez could make a picture of! and notice also the placing of the head, and the simplicity of mass, and of light and shade.

Painting.—Of course you can help your color with glazing and scumbling, but work for simplicity first. It is not necessary to use all sorts of processes; you can get fine results and admirable training from portrait studies, and the more directly you do it, the better the training will be.

Study the Portrait of Himself, by Albrecht DÜrer. You will find no affectation here; the most simple and direct brush-work only. You will not be able to do this sort of thing, but that is no reason why you should not try for it. It will depend on the brush-stroke. It implies a precision of eye as well as of hand. It means drawing quite as much as painting,—drawing in the painting. You will not get this great precision; nevertheless, try for it, and get as near it as you can. Don't try for too much cleverness; be content with good sincere study, and the most direct expression of planes that you can give.

Let your brush follow lines of structure. Don't lay on paint across a cheek, for instance. Notice the direction of the muscle fibre. It is the line of contraction of the muscle which gives the anatomical structure to a face. If your brush follows those, you will find that it takes the most natural course of direction.

Do the same with the planes of the body and of the clothing. Note the lines of action, and the brush-stroke will naturally follow them.

See that the whole form, and particularly the head, "constructs." The head is round, more or less; it is not flat. The planes of it cross the plane of the canvas, recede from it, cross behind, and return. This in all directions. You must make your painting express this. It is not enough that there be features, the features must be part of a whole which is surrounded, behind as well as in front, by the atmosphere. The hair is not just hair, it is the outer covering of the skull, and of necessity follows the curves of the skull; and there is a back part to the skull which you cannot see, but which you can feel—can know the presence of, because of the way it is connected with the front part by the sides. All this you must make evident in your painting, as well as the facts which are on the side of the skull turned toward you. How make it evident? By values and directness of brush-stroke.

Background.—Never treat the background as something different from the head. The whole thing must go together. The slightest change in the background is equivalent to that much change of the head itself. For the change means necessarily a different contrast, either of color or light and shade, and it will have its effect on the color or relief of the head.

Paint the two together, then. Make the head and all that goes with it or around it as equally parts of the picture, which all tend to affect each other. Your background is not something which can be laid in after the head is finished. True you can paint the background immediately around the head first, and then, after painting the head, extend the background to the edge of the canvas; but the color, tone, and character of the background must be decided upon at the time the head is painted, and carried on in the same feeling.

It is never good work to paint the head and then paint a background behind it. Particularly is this true when there are windows or any objects whatever in the background. It is most important that the whole thing shall be seen in the same kind of light, and in the same relation of light. This is hardly to be done when the head is one painting and the background another.

This is not rigidly true, however, in cases when the whole thing is planned beforehand, and studies made for each part, as in elaborate portraits and compositions which include several figures or special surroundings. But the principle holds good here also. The relation must be kept of the head to the surroundings, and the effect of the one upon the other always kept in mind.

Complex Portraits.—It is often possible to pose your model so as to bring out some characteristic occupation. This is often done in portraits of distinguished men. Such a treatment gives opportunity for composition both of the figure and of the various objects which may make up the background.

In such pictures you should study arrangement of line and mass, to make the thing Æsthetically interesting as well as interesting as a portrait. Composition in mass,—the consideration of the head and shoulders in relation to the space of the canvas,—is necessary in the simplest head; but as soon as the canvas takes in a representation of action on the part of the figure, line and movement must be considered, as was done so beautifully in Whistler's portrait. In this the study of composition is your problem. You may study it all the time and in every picture you do, but it should be worked out before you begin to paint.

Plan your canvas carefully always. Know just where everything is coming. When you leave things to chance, you are pretty sure to have trouble later.

Portraits Good Training.—I would not have you undertake to paint a portrait rashly. You should know what you are to expect. If you are not pretty sure of your drawing, and of the first principles of seeing color in nature, and of representing it on canvas, you are likely to get discouraged. Particularly if a friend poses for you, you may expect disappointment on both sides. Drawing a head from the life is a very different thing from drawing an inanimate object which will stay in one position as long as you can pay the rent. So in the painting of it, too, the color itself is alive. Flesh is something very elusive to see the color of. And when you find that just as you begin to get things well under way, or are in a particularly tight place, just at that moment your model must rest, you must stop while the position is changed and gotten back to again; then you will begin to realize that "la nature ne s'arrÊte pas."

I would have you know all this, I say, before you begin on your first portrait; but, nevertheless, if you can get a start at it you will find it extremely good practice. The very difficulties bring more definitely to you the real problems of painting. The fact that it is really the representation of something which has life has an interest quite of its own. The constant change of position on the part of the model will make you more observant, and less regardful of details; or if you do regard the details, and forget the other things, it will show you how inadequate those details are to real expression, unless there is something larger to place them on.

Don't undertake the painting of a head without considering well that you are likely to have trouble, and that the trouble you will have is most likely to be of a kind that you don't expect. But, having begun, keep your head and your grit, and do the best you can. Remember that you learn by mistakes, and failures are a part of every man's work, and of every painter's experience, and not only of your own.

You will save your self-esteem from considerable bruising if you make it a point never to let your sitter see your work till you are pretty well over the worst of it. The knowledge that it is to be seen will make you work less unconsciously, and you will find yourself trying for likeness, and all that sort of thing, when that is not what you should be thinking about; and if, after all, the thing is a failure, it is a great consolation to know that no one but yourself has seen it!

Beginning a Portrait.—The ways of beginning portraits are innumerable. There is no one right way. Some are right for one painter or subject, and some for others; but there are some methods which are more advisable for the beginner.

You can begin and carry through your painting entirely with body color, or you can begin it with frottÉes, and paint solidly into that. Take these two methods as types, and work in one or the other, according to what are the special qualities you want your work to have.

If you have never painted a head, and have some knowledge of the use of paint and of drawing, I would suggest that you make a few studies of the head and shoulders, life size, in solid color, and on a not too large canvas, say sixteen by twenty inches. This will leave you no extra space, and you can devote your whole attention to the study of the head, with only a few inches of background around it. You will probably make the head too large. A head looks larger than it really is, especially when you are putting it on canvas. If you measure them you will find that few heads will be longer than nine inches from the top of the hair to the bottom of the chin. Take this as the regular size in drawing it on your canvas, and make the other proportions according to that. Make a drawing of the outlines in straight lines, which shall give only the main proportions of the head, neck, and shoulders. Within this, block out the features largely. Don't draw the eyes, but only the shape of the orbit; nor the nostril, but only the mass of light and shade of the nose.

Construction.—In these studies avoid trying to get anything more than what will be suggested by this simple drawing. Use body color. Don't think of anything but what you have to represent. Never mind how the paint goes on, nor what colors you use, except that it is right in value, and as near the color as you can get. Put it on with the full brush, and try to get first the large masses and planes. Get it light where it is light, and dark where it is dark, and have contrast enough to give some relief. Don't try for any problems. Set your model in a simple, strong light and go ahead.

No details, no eyes, only the great structural masses. Try to feel the skull under these planes of light and dark. Have the edges of them pronounced and firm.

Do a lot of these studies; learn structure first. You will never be able to put an eye in its place in the orbit till you can make the plane of dark which expresses the bony structure of the orbit. You will feel the edge of the brow, of the cheekbone, and where the light falls on the temple and on the side of the nose. Inside of this is the dark of the cavity, broken for your purpose only by the light on the upper lid. Lay these in. Do the same with the other planes, and put your brush down firmly where you want the color, with no consideration but the simplest and most direct expression of value and color.

Now, when you can lay in a head in this way, so that you can express the likeness with nothing but these dozen or so of simple planes, you have got some idea of what are the main things which give character to a head. You will begin to understand how it should "construct." Into this you can put all the detail you want, and if the detail is in value with this beginning it will keep its proper relation to the whole.

Always when painting a head solidly, work this way. Get the action and character of the head as a whole. Block in the planes of the face and the features; and then go ahead to give the details which express the lesser characteristics. But always get the character, even the first look of resemblance, with this blocking in. Details and features will not give you the likeness, to say nothing of the character, if you have not gotten the character first by the representation of those proportions which mean the structure which underlies all the accidental positions of the detail of feature. The FrottÉe.—If you want to be more exact with your drawing before you begin to paint, lay in your canvas with a light-and-shade drawing in charcoal. Then make a frottÉe in one color, and paint into and over that, as was described in the Chapter on "Still Life."

By careful and studious use of these two methods of work you can learn the main principles of painting portraits, and modify the handling as you have need; for all the various methods of manipulation are modifications of one or the other, or combinations of both of these fundamentally different ways of working.

If you paint more than one sitting, get as good a drawing as you can the first day. Put in your frottÉe the next, or make your blocking in; then after that do your painting into the frottÉe, or the working out of such details as you decide to put in.

Titian painted solidly, probably with no details; then worked these in and glazed, then touched rich colors into the glaze.

But you had better not bother with all these ways of painting. When you can work well in the simplest way, you will find yourself making all sorts of experiments without any suggestions from me. Work first for facts of utmost importance, and technical methods are not such facts. Perception and representation by any most convenient means are the first things to be thought of, and nothing else is of importance until a certain amount of advance is made along this line.

Learn to see and paint the wholeness of the thing at once, not the details, but the fact of it. Try to lay in things so that you have a solid ground to work onto and into later.

Look for the vital things. Don't try for "finish." Finish is not worked for nor painted into a picture; finish occurs when you have represented all you have to express. When you have got character and values and true representation of color, you will find that the "finish" is there without your having bothered about it.

The masses you are to look for and emphasize are the great spaces where the light strikes and the shadows fall. Close your eyes. The lines disappear. You only see large planes of values; express these at once and simply.

Don't be afraid of rudeness, either of handling or of color, at first. Don't try for finesse. All these delicacies will come later. But you must get the important things first. Learn to be strong first, or you never will be. Delicacy comes after strength, not before.

So, too, freedom comes after knowledge—is the result of knowledge. So paint to learn. If it is rigid at first and hard, never mind. Get the understanding and the representation as well as you can, and try for other things later.