ARE PORTRAITS LIFE-LIKE?

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 10, 13 January 1933, Page 11

ARE PORTRAITS LIFE-LIKE?

Are the works of modern portrait painters more life-like and characteristic than the old-fashioned "photographic likenesses" produced by the artists; of the Victorian school? asks the "Daily Mail." Impressions created by a visit to the exhibition of tho Eoyal Society of -Portrait Painters, at the Eoyal Institute Galleries, suggest that modern portrait painters are concentrating on revealing the human, characteristics and "high-lights" of,the sittor's personality; abandoning 'studied, dummy-liko poses; and, producing f<3wer handsome-looking, but certainly more vivid aiid vital, portraits. Perhaps, however, the outstanding impression is that the day of the'pretty chocolate-box portrait of girls and young women has definitely ended. . "Undoubtedly," said one artist to a "Daily Mail", reporter, "modern portrait painters are more frank than their predecessors," . "la tha Victorian days," said another, "character wag often lost in the ■smoothness of the technique employed. But the modorri technique, even with portraits of women, is capable of capturing delicate charm, without the sickly effect bo often regarded by the Victorians as first essential."