Portrait artists

Van Gogh

Vincent Willem van Gogh lived between 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890 born in Zundert Netherlands. He suffered from a Bipolar disorder, which shines slowly throughout his work. Van Gogh was a post-impressionist artists which usually consists of landscapes, self portraits, portraits and still life. However he mainly painted wheatfields and sunflowers. 

Vincent was inspired by a fellow post-impressionist, Paul Gauguin and the people around him, landscapes, France and interiors. His artwork has an unique visual style of bright colours (usually yellow tints), dabs of paint and visible strokes. He mostly used the media of oil painting and watercolours. He followed the movement of expressionism and impressionism 

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was an Irish-born British figurative painter who's art became more personal and emotional when his husband committed suicide. Personally I see a cubism in his artwork, especially in his portraits of people. The main subject of his work are surreal portraits and figurative paintings.However he has drawn a lot of screaming popes. He usually uses dark and dirty colours, with the material or water paints and oil paints on a black canvas. His style is quite ghostly, as the object always looks transparent. The face shapes are usually distorted. 

Lucian Freude

Lucian Michael Freud was Jewish German, born in 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011 in Berlin, Germany and was raised in London, England and was considered the pre-eminent artist of his time. Freud's early paintings, which are mostly very small, are often associated with German expressionism (an influence he usually denied of), (hyper) realism  and surrealism in depicting people, plants and animals in unusual juxtapositions. He tried to capture the psychology of the person he drew into his paintings. After the war, he developed a thinly painted precise linear style with muted colours. He mostly painted portraits of people, dogs, his friends and nude models.  The materials he used were long hog hair brushes and used mostly oil paintings throughout his life. He;d blend in the paints perfectly like a photo to the point you can hardly see the brush strokes. He used all sorts of colours to get the different textures of the flesh. He would spend weeks, months or even years getting to know the person he was painting.