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Extremism in the various arts has ceased to arouse any special attention. In promoting the growth of this indifference, the visual arts have played a much more relentless role than either music or literature. Modern painting has specialized in excess; the band waggon is a vehicle without wheels on which silent music is performed with increasing loudness; and painters are much more desperately involved than writers or composers in a search for perverse selling points. The anti-portrait, dispensing with the element of likeness, was an acceptable art form long before the anti-novel, which excludes both plot and characters, had been acknowledged or even heard of by literature. It is only surprising that the label, with its distinct publicity value, was not first thought of by a painter.

     Anti-portraiture — unlike, perhaps, the anti-novel — may be justified both in theory and by its performance. The tendency away from representation, to which painting has been subject for more than half a century, is too pervasive to be eluded by any branch of the art. It is a tendency which shows no signs of slackening the sometimes mortal severity of its grip. But portraiture, provided it is not a fatality, is protected by its very nature from the more damaging effects of abstraction. The anti-portrait is an intelligible development; the nonfigurative portrait — except perhaps as the unique contribution to Western culture of some as yet unconstituted nation — is unimaginable; one cannot see in what way it would be distinguishable from any other non-figurative picture.

     What is usually called academic portraiture is the only sort of painting to have remained immune from the influence of anti-representational tendencies. But it has been able to do so, because its well being does not depend on its artistic merits. Such painters as Kelly, Elwes, James Gunn, may flourish in our time because they supply the demands of tradition, social prestige and prejudice, factors which respond slowly and almost insensibly to evolving aesthetic attitudes. But, resistant as this kind of painting has proved to be, none of its present day practitioners enjoy a repute comparable with that of Lavery, de Laszlo or Orpen, and their activities are unlikely to withstand indefinitely the pressures of a culture in which they are a survival unprotected by any archaic charms. Outside the still hale but shrunken Academic fold, the art of portraiture in the accepted sense of the term (i.e, which is at the same time ‘like’ and aesthetically acceptable) has become the conspicuous concern of a few exceptional artists.

     The obvious and the most effective reason for this decline of the art of portrait painting is the competing authority of the camera. No painter can guarantee, few might ever achieve, as great a degree of likeness as may be obtained relatively without effort by the use of the camera. The photographer, in less time than many artists might require for the completion of a preparatory sketch, can produce a series of pictures of which some may be excellent and all will have some measure of resemblance.

     There is no doubt that for several centuries the element of likeness has been the essential, the indispensable element in portraiture. Whatever other specifications may have variously prevailed before the invention of photography, the portraitist, whether he was catering for parted lovers or college committees, to parental affections or personal vanity, was required before anything else to provide an adequate likeness. In default of the camera, such needs could only be supplied by the artist. In supplying them, he was not, of course, supplying a need for works of art, though, in fact, if he was enough of artist he might invariably produce them. Every aspect of visual documentation was then, no less than portraiture, dependent absolutely on the abilities of artists; a situation prevailed in which artists might be devoted to the practice of their art without that consciousness of an exclusive aesthetic purpose which seems today to be a burden to so many of them; the functions of art and imitation might appear, especially in portraiture, to be indistinguishable. It was inevitable in these circumstances that the production of portraits should be regarded as essentially a branch of art, and the great masterpieces of portrait painting produced before the advent of photography encouraged this belief. Of the manifold purposes, however, for which a portrait in the sense of a likeness may be wanted there are none, perhaps, which can only be satisfied by a work of artistic quality. This being the case, it is inevitable that the services of the photographer, on the grounds of greater reliability, accuracy of performance and economy, should be preferred to those of the artist. Artists have now been deprived, or relieved, of the compelling motive (namely, that nobody else could do it) which, in the past, induced so many of them to devote their industry, talents, or genius to the pursuit of portrait painting.

     The position of the portraitist as an artist was not immediately threatened by the invention of the camera which, in its early days, lacked the crucial support of colour. Now that this lack has been removed, there is no longer room for doubt that the photographer has ousted the painter in the performance of the basic task of portraiture. On the contrary supposition, artists would be employed in such activities as the tracing of missing persons and the identification of criminals, and lady miniaturists would ply a thriving trade in the neighbourhood of the Passport Office.

     Police and passport photographs, however, in common with other sorts of photograph, are not works of art and the view is widespread and intelligible that no photograph can be a work of art or, if it is, that it must remain, in this respect, inferior to a good painting; it is argued, on these grounds, that portraiture, except in those cases in which the element of art is not merely superfluous but might prove to be a hindrance, should still be regarded as the legitimate province of the painter who may be expected to achieve a sufficient degree of resemblance and might also produce a work of art of higher quality than anything of which photography might be capable. Painters, mostly ‘academic’, but a few ‘independent’, have laboured to justify this view. In doing so, they have freely availed themselves of the aid of photography, with the praiseworthy intention of securing for art the camera’s superior powers of imitation. The photograph of a sitter may be squared up on to the canvas, traced on to the canvas or actually printed on to it from the negative, and there is no reason why the artistic merits of a painted portrait, provided the painter is also an artist, should be in any way diminished by the use of such procedures. There is, however, a considerable confusion of thought on issues of this kind, and the artist’s use of mechanical aids is commonly regarded as subject to some ill-defined limitation. The late R. G. Eves was penalized by the Royal Academy for sending portraits to their exhibitions painted over photographs printed on to the canvas. The practice was condemned on the revealing and indeed unjustifiable ground that it was a practice which impaired the durability of the canvas. The fact that this is not true provokes a suspicion that the verdict was inspired by the fallacy that the art of painting is also in some mysterious manner a moral exercise in the performance of which certain tricks or short cuts must be regarded as cheating. In fact, art is an activity in which the means are always justified by the ends. Vermeer’s presumed use of the camera obscura does not detract from the beauty of his finished pictures; and nobody would object to painting by apes if their art could be favourably compared with that of Raphael.

     It is for these very reasons that we should hesitate before accepting the idea that the photographer is debarred by the nature of his medium from producing portraits which should be as valuable aesthetically as those of the painter. The photographers themselves might be expected to assert that they are not so debarred, while conceding that no Rembrandt, or even Sargent, had as yet appeared among their ranks. It would, however, be an incautious assumption that this is impossible. The camera is a medium for producing images. The range of its effects may not, as far as portraiture is concerned, be less limited than that of painting; and to suppose that there is some aesthetic virtue in the substance of paint which must ensure for ever its superiority for artistic purposes would be absurd. But misconceptions of this kind are possibly betrayed by the fading glamour which still attaches to the notion of being ‘done in oils’ and by the fact that in the ordinary way the prices of pictures vary in accordance with the medium, though the differences are a very inaccurate reflection of the cost of materials.

     Those who concede the actual or potential value of photography as an artistic medium, might still be unwilling to adorn the walls of their houses with photographs, and a persistent demand for painted portraits might prove to be the logical consequence of the inadequacy of photographs as decoration. It is difficult to imagine an interior decorator recommending his clients to decorate their dining rooms by hanging photographs of their relations on the walls. But perhaps it is not so difficult; fashions in decoration are both pliable and subject to rapid change, and the idea, so ‘amusing’ and at the same time so ‘democratic’, of the ancestral snapshot as a form of decoration might easily take hold if adroitly presented. Moreover, if we sense a significant aesthetic quality in the photographs of the forties and fifties of the nineteenth century, when photographers were more closely concerned with standards of pictorial composition, this impression is perhaps much more than a delusion based on the uncritical benevolence with which Victoriana of any kind is now apt to be appraised; and it may be said that the decorative possibilities of the daguerretotype are apparent without the questionable support of fashion.

     The idea of adorning the interior of a civic building with a life-size photograph of the monarch in coronation robes is one which might affront persons of educated taste. But, on reflection, they might agree that a picture by a talented photographer with some notion of decorative propriety would be infinitely preferable to a painted portrait by an inferior artist. To dispel any doubts on this point, it is sufficient to peer briefly down into the depths to which official portraiture has today subsided.

     When traditional skills have been superseded by technical advances, their continued cultivation assumes in the end a spurious character. Of course, it is true that when any technique is superseded, the gains provided by the new method will be offset by a corresponding loss of valuable features peculiar to the discarded process. But on the assumption that the principal purpose of the operation is more effectively fulfilled by the new method, this sacrifice will be made; and it will be made the more readily if the earlier method has been superseded not for all, but merely for some of the purposes which it previously served. This is a generalization which may apply with special force to artistic techniques. We may lament the replacement by mechanical devices of many established artistic processes, but we may also overlook the ultimately consoling fact that art is practised for its own sake when it is not practised for the sake of anything else, and it is, therefore, extremely unlikely that artistic processes of some kind or other will ever be entirely superseded by automation. When the principal, the exclusive purpose in view, is to produce a work of art, the method of production, whatever its apparent nature, will, if it is successful, be rightly described as an artistic method. This view — I am tempted to say this principle — of the ultimate inviolability of artistic processes derives from the undoubted truth that art is not inherent in tools or substances, but arises from the manner in which these are handled. The practical consequence of this has been that the mechanical methods which in the past have replaced established artistic processes have in some instances proved equally suited to artistic expression. We should rashly assert of any mechanical agency which does not entirely exclude the human element that it lacks artistic possibilities until we have seen what artists are able to do with it, and we should make certain when we are tempted to deplore the passing of some time-honoured craft that what we are regretting is not merely the obsolescence of a particular set of tools.

     The manuscript production of books, for example, ceased altogether with the development of the more effective mechanical process of printing. Not only, however, is it a fact that the arts of illustration and calligraphy have survived, it is also true that printing turned out to be a process which could be utilized artistically and we may in some contexts reasonably refer to it as the art of printing. The techniques of engraving for reproduction, to which the invention of printing gave rise, are now obsolescent; from the aesthetic point of view, however, they are no more than a particular way of drawing and draughtsmanship, whatever other dangers may now beset it, will not be further imperilled by the total disappearance of the mezzotint or the etching. Nor can it be denied that the various modes of reproduction by photographic block, which have now replaced the engraver, have particular characteristics which may be exploited aesthetically by the designer or illustrator.

     Considerations such as these have a special relevance to the present decline in portrait painting and must lead to the conviction that, as a special category of art or even as a profession shorn of any aesthetic pretension, it is unlikely to last. The history of portrait painting in the present century suggests that artists and, to some extent, patrons have been aware, however reluctantly or obscurely, that this must be so. It is at any rate true that there has been a notable neglect of portraiture in the work of those painters who may also claim to be artists; and the indifference to the factor of resemblance displayed in such portraits as they may produce is perhaps an attestation of their knowledge that in this technical matter they have now been outmatched. It is not too much to say that, from the aesthetic point of view, the best contemporary portraits are those which least resemble the sitter. Had the protagonists of a school of anti-portraiture declared themselves, their action must have been seen in the end to be anything but a stunt. We may admire a portrait by Picasso while failing to recognize the individual traits or even the humanity of its subject. The majority of people who have an informed interest in painting today are probably of the opinion that the portraits of Kisling, Beckmann, David Jones or even those of Van Dongen, let alone those of Picasso, are superior aesthetically to the portraits of Augustus John. It is true that the charms of a portrait by, for instance, Modigliani, might be intimately inspired by the personality and indeed by the physical features of the sitter. But everything that the picture had to tell us about its subject would have been first transformed in the alembic of the artist’s imagination and such a painter as Modigliani would be concerned not to disguise but to display the effects of the alchemy. If he could now be restored to life, he would probably have more commissions than he could deal with, but the demand for his work would be a demand for art, not specifically for portraiture. Patrons might want his portraits but not his portraits of their wives. The minority of his admirers sufficiently perceptive to value the unique comment he would supply on the temperament and appearance of some person they loved, would not be deluded by the idea that such a picture would in any way be a substitute for the photographs of the same sitter which, on more commonplace grounds, they might want quite as much.

     Complaints are still heard of the lack of painters either able or willing to paint portraits which are satisfactory likenesses and at the same time works of some artistic quality. But the sincerity of this complaint is scarcely more reliable than its foundation. There are, of course, plenty of painters capable of supplying the required article; and even if there are few today who would feel impelled by their artistic personalities to do so, there are none, perhaps, who might not be prepared on occasion to dispense with this peculiar inducement if others, more materially attractive, were to be offered. But artists cannot be expected to advertise their qualifications for a task to which they may be temperamentally averse, and their potential employers promote the situation they deplore by the inadequacy of their attempts to determine whether it actually exists.

     In truth, what provokes this complaint is not that the capacity to combine art and imitation in a portrait has been lost or is disappearing, but that a situation exists as a result of the achievements of photography in which the painter of portraits, if he is also an artist, no longer feels obliged to consider the claims of verisimilitude and may even deliberately avoid any effect of naturalism in his work. But the view that this is a situation to be deplored might be difficult to defend. It remains a reasonable belief that so long as the art of painting continues to be practised, artists will continue to paint the faces of their choice and that there will be some, conceivably, to whom the face may seem to be a theme sufficient for a lifetime’s study. The fact that no artist who turns to portraiture either now or in the future will be primarily concerned to produce an acceptable likeness cannot prejudice the aesthetic value of their work; it might, indeed, be plausibly argued that this independence of natural appearances is, from the aesthetic point of view, a positive advantage. As a medium of self-expression, painting is immeasurably more subtle than photography; and though there may be many ways in which a photograph can be a work of artistic quality, no camera has so far been invented which responds to the changing moods of the photographer with the same immediacy as the painter’s hand to the faintest tremor of his mind. So long as the painter of portraits was absolutely required to supply a recognizable image of the sitter, the unique sensitivity of the technique of painting to every small peculiarity of his personal vision was not fully exploited. Now, however, that photography has superseded painting as a method of reproducing natural appearances, artists may well feel impelled to cultivate to the limit the unquestioned superiority of painting as a means of self-expression, careless or proud of any distortions of normal vision that this may entail. Though the course of their imagination will be guided by their responses to the model, there is no reason why they should in any way repress their imaginative powers for the sake merely of doing what the photographer can do much better. Viewed in this light, it might be said that the invention of photography has bestowed upon the artist who paints portraits a new and fruitful liberty the possibilities of which it would not previously have occurred to him to investigate. He may now feel that his work is not conditioned by any but aesthetic factors. His freedom from what he may now regard as the restraints of naturalism is total. Nor, however, since naturalism is not necessarily a restraint, is he bound to be deterred by the authority of the camera from exploiting the advantages of a naturalistic approach, if inspiration suggests that for him it is the right one; in doing so, indeed, he may make use of the unrivalled assistance which camera, in this respect, provides. The profession of painting has certainly been severely damaged by the loss to a superior competitor of its age-old monopoly of portraiture, but it may emerge that art itself has not lost much.