essay about self portrait

• Essay Topic Generator
• Summary Generator
• Thesis Maker Academic
• Sentence Rephraser
• Read My Paper
• Hypothesis Generator
• Cover Page Generator
• Text Compactor
• Essay Scrambler
• Essay Plagiarism Checker
• Hook Generator
• AI Writing Checker
• Notes Maker
• Overnight Essay Writing
• Topic Ideas
• Writing Tips
• Essay Writing (by Genre)
• Essay Writing (by Topic)

Self-Portrait Essay: Examples and How to Write a Portrait

A portrait essay presents a personality to the readers. It usually focuses on the aspects of life that are the most exciting or unique.

It comprises two types of papers: a self-portrait essay and a portrait of another person. This article explains how to write these assignments with utmost efficiency. You will find the best tips, ideas, and samples to describe yourself or someone else as precisely as possible.

👧 Self-Portrait Essay

A self-portrait essay is a piece of writing that describes the author’s looks and personal qualities . It uses evocative images and characteristic details to show why this person stands out from the crowd. As a rule, it is a descriptive or reflective essay. Still, it can be argumentative if you want to contradict someone else’s opinion about you.

How to Write a Self-Portrait

Below you’ll find several ideas for a self-portrait essay. These are just general guidelines. If you need a creative and well-formulated topic, you are welcome to use our topic-generating tool .

• Start the introduction with an introduction. We are not talking about “Hi, my name is Cathy,” although this variant is also possible in some contexts. Tell about your family and where you live. Do not just list facts as if you are answering a questionnaire. Make up a background story.
• Imagine yourself a book character. How would you describe yourself if you wrote a book about your life ? This approach can make your self-portrait essay more poetic and literary. Replace the epithets that can describe many people (straight nose, thin lips, high forehead) with metaphors (a nose as straight as an arrow, paper-thin lips, expansive forehead). It will make your essay more memorable.
• Speak about objects & stories. Appearance is only a tiny part of your personality. Your life consists of items you like, people you love, and stories you create. That’s what you readers will enjoy reading!
• Conclude with your hopes for the future. Do not reiterate what you said before, even if you cannot imagine anything new. Write how you would like to develop your skills or become a better professional in the future. Make your essay open-ended, as any human life is.

Self-Portrait Essay Example

Who am I? What kind of person am I? What do I like? What do I want to become? In this essay, I will describe my appearance and how it reflects my inner world. Looking in the mirror, I see a slender but slightly skinny girl. I have an oval face, a small straight nose, and sparkling eyes. It is the eyes that make my friends and acquaintances look at my face. They are profound, although they add playfulness to my face. In cloudy weather, they acquire a dark steel shade. When it is sunny, they brighten up. In general, I have kind gray eyes. As my friends say, it seems that they “laugh.” That’s what I am all about. I am kind, cheerful, moderately strict, and responsive. I have a high forehead, hidden behind curtain bangs, and beautiful thick eyebrows of the correct shape hidden under the bangs. But this is not a gift from nature. I had to work on the form of the eyebrows on my own. My lips are not thin, but not full either. Behind them, there are snow-white teeth. The hair is straight, although I always wanted to have curls. It is wheat-colored and reaches the shoulders. I am a purposeful person, so I always set tasks that I immediately try to accomplish. But I never stop in my development. I raise the bar even higher and confidently put the next goal. It is essential for me to be the best in everything, so I have to work harder. Most likely, this is my drawback, but this quality fuels me to keep on growing. I would like to become firm, successful, and self-confident.

👨‍🎨️ Descriptive Portrait Essay

A descriptive essay about a person is a genre that analyzes the individual features and human qualities of a given person. People have so many different sides that there is a broad array of possibilities in this genre. Write of someone you know well enough (to have sufficient material).

Essay About a Person: Ideas

Below you’ll find six great ideas for an essay about a person.

• Describe appearance . First impressions are the most lasting . Your readers will get your message better if you give them a “picture.” It will play the role of a whiteboard where you’ll attack all the other traits.
• Link appearance to personality traits . But looks are not everything. They are the top of the iceberg. Show your reader why you paid attention to those characteristics and which conclusions you made.
• Mention their manners . It is optional but quite exciting to track. We are not stable, and our manners reflect those emotional shifts. Describe how the person behaves in stressful situations .
• Spot the emotions they raise in you . This part will make a perfect conclusion. Share your feelings with the readers to build empathy.
• Balance between being concise and informative . Avoid overwhelming your reader with irrelevant details. If the described person is someone you know well, it may be challenging to point out what is worth mentioning and what is not.
• Learn how to describe from professionals . If you wish to learn how to write, you should read a lot. In particular, you should read works of the same genre. Write down the metaphors and epithets your favorite author uses in their character descriptions.

How to Write a Portrait

We have prepared for you a mini guide on how to write a portrait of a person. Just follow these 8 simple steps:

• Collect information about a person . It is crucial to write about a person you know well, like a close friend, a classmate, or a family member. Consider conducting an interview with this person or talking with other people who know this individual to gain more insights and observations.
• Create a thesis and an outline . Choose interesting details, anecdotes, unique features, or qualities of your chosen person that are worth describing in your essay. Organize all the information logically in an outline to make writing easier. Also, create a thesis statement, which must include the person you write about and your purpose for describing them.
• Start with a physical description . At this stage, you need to be as specific as possible. Try to describe not only the appearance of the person but add details about their smell, voice, etc.
• Describe the behavior . Focus on what makes this person unique — their laugh, a manner of talking, a way of moving, etc.
• Demonstrate your character’s reputation . To do so, show how your described person makes others feel, treats others, and contributes to the world.
• Show your character’s environment and belongings . A person’s environment and belongings can reveal much about their personality, interests, and values. So, include details about what things are important to your described individual and whether their environment looks tidy, cluttered, dirty, etc.
• Write about their manner of speech . Describe the person’s choice of words and intonation to reflect their education level, confidence or fear, and unique worldview.
• Conclude by summarizing unique qualities . In your last paragraph, summarize what makes your described person unique. Add a concluding sentence conveying the final impression they have made on you.

Descriptive Portrait Essay Example

My best friend is a person who deserves a separate book. She had a complicated but interesting life. She is the third child in a large family and wants to become a nurse. I will dedicate this essay to her features and personal qualities to show that you can be a good person despite anything. Mary’s appearance is unremarkable and even plain. She is tall and plump, and her gestures are indecisive. The girl seems to be shy, but she becomes very confident when her family or values are harmed. One could see a strict line between her eyebrows. It marks her inner strength and decisiveness. The look of her grey eyes is attentive and benevolent. It helps her win the interlocutor in an argument. By the way, communication skills are the strongest part of her character. She is open and cheerful but sometimes too impulsive. The way she speaks and behaves comforts me, like a cold winter evening in front of a fireplace. She is kind and caring, and always does her best to make any interaction pleasurable. Still, when someone acts with hypocrisy, she prefers to break up with such a person. It is hard for Mary to give people a second chance. This feature has its drawbacks, but it also makes her friends’ circle tight and reliable. Mary wants to become a nursery teacher because she loves children. At the moment, she is studying for that, and I am sure she will succeed. This girl has taught me that people can combine mutually exclusive features in themselves and remain to be nice friends and intelligent specialists.

We hope we’ve inspired you to write your portrait essay. If you have already written your text and want it to be read aloud, you are welcome to use our text-to-speech tool .

❓ Portrait Essay FAQ

How to write a portrait essay.

1. Make a list of the most remarkable facial features and character traits of the person in question. 2. Relate the above to their character. 3. Group your findings into categories. 4. Dedicate one main body paragraph to each category.

How to Start a Portrait Essay?

Any essay should start with background information. In the case of a portrait essay, you could mention how you got to know the person or what your first impression was. Or, you can give general information about their family and work. Finish your introduction with a thesis statement, informing the reader of the purpose of your writing.

How to Write a Self-portrait Essay?

1. Sit in front of the mirror and think about which of your features differ you from other people. 2. Write the main body, dedicating each paragraph to a different aspect of your appearance. 3. Write the introduction about what kind of person you are and how you came to the place where you are now. 4. Write the conclusion about your future intentions.

How Do You Write a Character Portrait Essay?

1. Carefully read all the author’s descriptions of the character. 2. Link them to the plot as most characters reveal themselves gradually. 3. Think what impressed you the most about the character. 4. Write your opinion using the image the author created and your own imagination.

🔗 References

• Descriptive Essays | Purdue Online Writing Lab
• Descriptive Essay Examples – YourDictionary
• How to Give a Description of a Character – wikiHow
• How to Write About Yourself | Indeed.com
• 7 Helpful Tips on How to Write a Memorable Personal Essay
• Personal Essay Topics and Prompts – ThoughtCo

How to Write a Self-Portrait Essay

How to Create a Life Map

A self-portrait essay is a paper that describes you -- and what's important to you -- to your reader. Choosing what aspects of yourself you want to describe before you begin your essay will help you choose the most evocative images and events to include in your essay. Using specific images from your life will give your reader a physical image of who you are.

Reflect on Your Experiences

Before you begin writing your self-portrait essay, reflect on yourself. Think about the sort of personality you have, what types of people you get along with and your goals and aspirations. Once you've taken time to look at yourself, think about what aspects of yourself you want to focus on. To make your essay engaging, pick an area that challenges you. For instance, you might write about how you try to form new friendships despite your anxieties, or how you commit to your convictions even if it brings you into conflict with others. You can also explore what ideas -- religion, philosophy, ethics -- are important to you. Deciding on two or three aspects you wish to focus on will help you narrow down what you include in your writing.

Introduce Yourself

Begin writing your essay by introducing your reader to yourself. Describe where you live and your family, and provide a physical description of yourself. To make your introduction catchy and interesting, avoid listing these details as if you're just answering a series of questions. Working them into physical descriptions of your life can make this information more interesting. For instance, if you're 17, you might introduce your age by saying: "We moved into this squat brick house 15 years ago -- two years after I was born."

You can also use a picture of yourself -- a literal self-portrait -- as an image to begin your essay. Find a picture of yourself from your past, and describe what that picture shows about you. For instance, if your picture shows you when you were upset, you might say that you can remember being sad when you were a child, but you can't quite remember why. This can be an excellent way of bringing in your reader and beginning to discuss how you have or haven't changed over time.

Tell Your Stories

The body of your essay should explore the aspects of yourself you decided to write about. For each aspect, pick two or three events from your life and write a paragraph for each. If you want to show your determination, for instance, you might describe a time that you ran all the way to school when your bus didn't come. If you hold steadfast to your opinions, you could describe a long political argument you had with your family, and the mixture of pride and anger you felt afterward. These events will show your personality and give you the opportunity to describe physical locations and actions, which will make your self-portrait feel more real to your reader.

In addition to using events from your life to illustrate your personality, describe yourself using objects from your life. If you're an avid reader, spend part of your essay describing the large bookshelves in your room. If you're meticulous about your hobbies, use an image of a plant that you keep on your windowsill.

The conclusion paragraph of your essay should tie your paper together. It should draw on the aspects of your personality and the events in your life that you've described and ask where you're going in the future, or what you feel about yourself now that those events are in the past. Don't summarize or restate the items you've already described. Instead, tie them together or build on them. For instance, if you described making art in the past, talk about how you hope to rediscover your creativity. If you know you'll have to deal with ideas you don't agree with in the future, write how you think you'll handle them.

Alternatively, conclude your essay by restating the details from your introduction in a different light. By tying the beginning and end of your essay together, you will give a sense of completion to your reader. For instance, if you describe your house as "gloomy" in your introduction, but spend your paper talking about the fun you've had with your siblings, you might conclude your essay by saying: "Yes, it's a gloomy house, but we know how to make it shine."

Related Articles

How to Write a Narrative Essay

How to Write an Autobiography for a College Assignment

What Should a Narrative Essay Format Look Like?

How to Write a Short Essay Describing Your Background

How to Start a Personal Essay for High School English

How to Build an Outline for a Personal Narrative

How to Write a Descriptive Essay on an Influential Person in Your Life

How to write an essay with a thesis statement.

• Napa Valley College: Self Portrait (Description) Essay
• Teen Ink: Self Portrait

Jon Zamboni began writing professionally in 2010. He has previously written for The Spiritual Herald, an urban health care and religious issues newspaper based in New York City, and online music magazine eBurban. Zamboni has a Bachelor of Arts in religious studies from Wesleyan University.

Have a language expert improve your writing

Check your paper for plagiarism in 10 minutes, generate your apa citations for free.

• Knowledge Base
• College essay

How to Write About Yourself in a College Essay | Examples

Published on September 21, 2021 by Kirsten Courault . Revised on May 31, 2023.

An insightful college admissions essay requires deep self-reflection, authenticity, and a balance between confidence and vulnerability. Your essay shouldn’t just be a resume of your experiences; colleges are looking for a story that demonstrates your most important values and qualities.

To write about your achievements and qualities without sounding arrogant, use specific stories to illustrate them. You can also write about challenges you’ve faced or mistakes you’ve made to show vulnerability and personal growth.

Table of contents

Start with self-reflection, how to write about challenges and mistakes, how to write about your achievements and qualities, how to write about a cliché experience, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about college application essays.

Before you start writing, spend some time reflecting to identify your values and qualities. You should do a comprehensive brainstorming session, but here are a few questions to get you started:

• What are three words your friends or family would use to describe you, and why would they choose them?
• Whom do you admire most and why?
• What are the top five things you are thankful for?
• What has inspired your hobbies or future goals?
• What are you most proud of? Ashamed of?

As you self-reflect, consider how your values and goals reflect your prospective university’s program and culture, and brainstorm stories that demonstrate the fit between the two.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Writing about difficult experiences can be an effective way to show authenticity and create an emotional connection to the reader, but choose carefully which details to share, and aim to demonstrate how the experience helped you learn and grow.

Be vulnerable

It’s not necessary to have a tragic story or a huge confession. But you should openly share your thoughts, feelings, and experiences to evoke an emotional response from the reader. Even a cliché or mundane topic can be made interesting with honest reflection. This honesty is a preface to self-reflection and insight in the essay’s conclusion.

Don’t overshare

With difficult topics, you shouldn’t focus too much on negative aspects. Instead, use your challenging circumstances as a brief introduction to how you responded positively.

Share what you have learned

It’s okay to include your failure or mistakes in your essay if you include a lesson learned. After telling a descriptive, honest story, you should explain what you learned and how you applied it to your life.

While it’s good to sell your strengths, you also don’t want to come across as arrogant. Instead of just stating your extracurricular activities, achievements, or personal qualities, aim to discreetly incorporate them into your story.

Brag indirectly

Mention your extracurricular activities or awards in passing, not outright, to avoid sounding like you’re bragging from a resume.

Use stories to prove your qualities

Even if you don’t have any impressive academic achievements or extracurriculars, you can still demonstrate your academic or personal character. But you should use personal examples to provide proof. In other words, show evidence of your character instead of just telling.

Many high school students write about common topics such as sports, volunteer work, or their family. Your essay topic doesn’t have to be groundbreaking, but do try to include unexpected personal details and your authentic voice to make your essay stand out .

To find an original angle, try these techniques:

• Focus on a specific moment, and describe the scene using your five senses.
• Mention objects that have special significance to you.
• Instead of following a common story arc, include a surprising twist or insight.

Your unique voice can shed new perspective on a common human experience while also revealing your personality. When read out loud, the essay should sound like you are talking.

If you want to know more about academic writing , effective communication , or parts of speech , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Academic writing

• Writing process
• Transition words
• Passive voice
• Paraphrasing

 Communication

• How to end an email
• Ms, mrs, miss
• How to start an email
• I hope this email finds you well
• Hope you are doing well

 Parts of speech

• Personal pronouns
• Conjunctions

First, spend time reflecting on your core values and character . You can start with these questions:

However, you should do a comprehensive brainstorming session to fully understand your values. Also consider how your values and goals match your prospective university’s program and culture. Then, brainstorm stories that illustrate the fit between the two.

When writing about yourself , including difficult experiences or failures can be a great way to show vulnerability and authenticity, but be careful not to overshare, and focus on showing how you matured from the experience.

Through specific stories, you can weave your achievements and qualities into your essay so that it doesn’t seem like you’re bragging from a resume.

Include specific, personal details and use your authentic voice to shed a new perspective on a common human experience.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Courault, K. (2023, May 31). How to Write About Yourself in a College Essay | Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved June 18, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/college-essay/write-about-yourself/

Is this article helpful?

Kirsten Courault

Other students also liked, style and tone tips for your college essay | examples, what do colleges look for in an essay | examples & tips, how to make your college essay stand out | tips & examples, "i thought ai proofreading was useless but..".

I've been using Scribbr for years now and I know it's a service that won't disappoint. It does a good job spotting mistakes”

Essay Service Examples Life About Myself

Portrait Essay about Myself

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Our writers will provide you with an essay sample written from scratch: any topic, any deadline, any instructions.

Cite this paper

Related essay topics.

Get your paper done in as fast as 3 hours, 24/7.

Related articles

Most popular essays

• About Myself
• Scholarship

At a minimum, please ensure you answer the following questions in your statement: How are you...

• Career Choice

I have chosen to study at University College Dublin for various reasons. Known for its world-class...

My desire to contribute to efforts aimed at addressing health inequalities especially in rural...

Growing up in a developing country (Nigeria), a chance at education was one of the greatest...

• Jesus Christ

We know Christmas is a good holiday for many reasons and also it is the most exciting part and...

• Nursing Scholarship

Design thinking is a cognitive process where the person thinks like a designer to try to...

At this stage in my professional career, I am contemplating plans to provide more balance to my...

• Cultural Identity
• New Zealand

Culture is the main source of influence when it comes to perspectives, values, decisions and...

YTL Foundation is committed to providing opportunities to deserving students who show potential to...

Join our 150k of happy users

• Get original paper written according to your instructions
• Save time for what matters most

Fair Use Policy

EduBirdie considers academic integrity to be the essential part of the learning process and does not support any violation of the academic standards. Should you have any questions regarding our Fair Use Policy or become aware of any violations, please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected].

We are here 24/7 to write your paper in as fast as 3 hours.

Provide your email, and we'll send you this sample!

By providing your email, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy .

Say goodbye to copy-pasting!

Get custom-crafted papers for you.

Enter your email, and we'll promptly send you the full essay. No need to copy piece by piece. It's in your inbox!

Seeing Our Own Reflection in the Birth of the Self-Portrait

By Jason Farago Sept. 25, 2020

• Share full article

Who are you, and what are you doing here? You, there in the mirror, there in the lens of your phone: What do you see?

In the eyes of us poor moderns, it seems self-evident that a picture can capture who you are. That your posed image, your face and your clothing, express something essential about your personality. It’s the myth on which every selfie stands.

But the premise that an image can be an authentic representation — that you are a unique individual at all — is not self-evident. It is a historical development. It had to be invented.

More than five centuries ago, Albrecht Dürer painted images so detailed and exact that they seemed some kind of divine creation.

One subject fascinated him above all: himself.

In the year 1500, Dürer was already the leading artist of the German Renaissance, and famous across Europe as an entrepreneur of new media. He had made his name, and a small fortune, through the production and sale of woodcuts and engravings.

That year, he painted this commanding image, which hangs today in the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. It’s one of the earliest standalone self-portraits in Western painting — and for my two pfennigs, the greatest self-portrait ever painted: a picture that radiates authority five centuries on.

But it isn’t exactly a welcoming picture. It’s supremely arrogant. So perfect it’s almost airless, so detailed it feels fetishistic. Its symmetry and frontal orientation give Dürer the appearance, and unapproachability, of a holy icon.

He completed this self-portrait at 28, though his face has a curiously ageless aspect. His skin is bright, gently illuminated from a soft light source from the composition’s left.

His cheeks are smooth. Not full like a prosperous burgher’s, not sunken like a malnourished student’s — but solid, unblemished. Like an image of an ideal man.

His small mouth is framed by a goatee, a trimmed beard and a bell curve of a mustache. Each whisker has been meticulously flecked, thanks to the relatively new medium of oil paint. They give this self-portrait a human presence, but also an alienating exactitude.

Remember, it’s 1500. Flat mirrors are still a few decades away, and Dürer would have been looking at his reflection in a convex glass. This lifelikeness has to be calculated. The path from decoration to art goes through math.

Look how the lines of his hair weave in and out. How brighter strands and darker ones braid together in each lock.

They’re so adept that Dürer’s rivals suspected he had a special brush.

The rich, fur-lined coat is an outfit suitable for a nobleman or a scholar — not someone who works with his hands. He’s showing off his painterly skill here, picking out every bristle. But he’s also affirming that he sees himself as more than a mere technician.

See how, with his long fingers, he strokes the fur collar? How the soft brown bristles peek over his middle finger? It’s a beautiful, even perverse detail, one that plunges this pseudo-icon back into the realm of the senses.

It’s his left hand — though in the mirror it looks like his right. It’s raised over his heart, and he has even highlighted the veins that pump blood from one organ to the other.

My hand and my heart. Divine benediction and sensual caress. Who I am, and what God has made me.

And his big gray-brown eyes, slightly asymmetrical, stare straight forward.

You can even see the mullion and transom of a window reflected in the iris of his left eye.

This is not the squint of an artist at work, but a firm, interpellating gaze on the beholder. His eyes bear down with such conviction that one troubled museumgoer, a century ago, mutilated them with a hatpin. (Repaired soon after!)

What those eyes express is a new kind of lucidity. They’re the eyes of an artist who not only knows how to depict himself, but who considers himself worthy of being depicted.

He did it first at age 13. Working in his father’s goldsmith shop, Dürer made this three-quarter-length self-portrait: keen, well fed, stringy hair bundled under his hood. He scratched it out in silverpoint: an extremely difficult medium, since it allows no corrections.

At 22, having abandoned the goldsmith trade for an artist’s apprenticeship, he painted himself in the same three-quarter profile. The flesh has turned buttery, the clothes a bit richer. He holds a flower reputed as an aphrodisiac: Dürer sent this to his bride-to-be.

At 26, the artist pictured himself in luxurious getup: expensive gloves, coordinated tunic and doublet, a braid over his broad upper pecs.

And out the window, an Italianate landscape: Dürer was just back from Venice, and had ambitions that Nuremberg couldn’t contain.

Self-portraiture, at this point, was still fresh terrain. Most artists still didn’t even sign their names. During the medieval era and the first decades of the Renaissance, the artist’s person was hardly a worthy subject of depiction.

In Italy up to now, the most an artist might do would be to slip himself into the background of a crowd scene. You’d paint the Madonna, you’d sketch out the adoring magi, and then —

like Botticelli, you’d position yourself off to one side.

But by the end of the 15th century, the self-portrait has become an act of self-fashioning: how I present myself to you . Dürer’s self-portraits were not the very first, but he made himself his subject with uncommon frequency.

Even his nudes were something much more carefully worked than an anatomy lesson.

Here begins a Renaissance conception of the self that has become so commonplace we don’t even notice it: the self as a subjective individual, the author of one’s own life story. And a modern conception, too, of what it means to be an artist.

Dürer, in his self-portraits, was calling into being an image of the artist as someone with more than just technical facility. The artist needed a more humanistic inspiration, partly from books, partly from God.

I am no mere skilled craftsman, like my father , the picture says. I have imagination, I have learning, I have a gift. All of which elevate me out of the workshop and into high society — or even higher.

Of Dürer’s self-portraits, this has the most unsettling orientation, with the artist’s body flush with the picture plane. And note the background: almost pitch black, not even a shadow.

But this sort of frontal orientation, before Dürer painted himself long-haired and bright-eyed in 1500, was highly rare for a portrait.

It was usually reserved for a more august subject.

It was Christ who usually appeared in this front-facing pose. Artists used it to echo the miraculous impression of his face on the veil of Saint Veronica. Others, like Gerard David around 1500, depict him frontally as the Salvator Mundi, or world’s savior.

Dürer himself began, though never finished, a painting of Christ as Salvator Mundi in 1505. Same full-frontal orientation, same raised right hand.

The motif was popular in Italy too. (Though who knows how much Leonardo painted of this one). Against a simple background, an image of authority and grace.

What did it mean for Dürer to depict himself as the Son of God? The pious have always striven to live in imitation of Christ, though rarely this literally.

The art historian Joseph Leo Koerner offers one convincing answer: Dürer’s merger of “artist’s portrait and cult image of God,” represented an innovation of personal authorship, one that emerged precisely at the turn of the 16th century.

Dürer didn’t literally think of himself as the Second Coming. He was as pious as any other German in the years before the Reformation. Where Christ raises his hand in blessing, Dürer points his inward, and invokes his God-given gift: the gift of art.

Look at the self-portrait’s two remaining details.

First, the inscription — not in German, but high-flown Latin — lettered painstakingly, in gold, at eye level. “Thus I, Albrecht Dürer of Nuremberg, painted myself with indelible colors at the age of 28 years.”

Then, also at eye level, the date and the monogram. 1500: a new century, a turning point.

A.D.: Anno Domini , in the year of the Lord.

But also, more important: Albrecht Dürer.

Dürer plastered this monogram on everything he made. It was a newfangled thing.

He used it to signal his sole authorship of his art, after centuries when European artists worked collectively and anonymously. He used it not only on his paintings, but in a still young new medium: printmaking.

In the early 16th century Dürer made dozens of woodcuts and engravings, like this one of the melancholy Saint Jerome.

The prints made him Europe’s most famous artist outside Italy.

And each one bore the AD monogram as a mark of quality. The prints became a flourishing business, staffed by block cutters, apprentices and traveling salespeople. Dürer oversaw the production.

The AD functions, literally, as a trademark. His prints were being knocked off almost as soon as they left the shop, and Dürer went to court to stop forgers from using his monogram.

But on what grounds could he sue? How could a work of art be a “Dürer,” if Dürer’s hand never touched it?

Answer: through a new kind of authorship, born with the rise of printmaking, in which the work of art is the product of invention and skill at once.

This understanding declared an entirely new kind of individuality. One so enduring that we barely notice how bold it would have seemed in 1500.

Now it seems barely worth clarifying that artists depict themselves to tell a story about themselves — to express “what’s inside.” Like Frida Kahlo, facing front and wearing a necklace of thorns, her face the image of pride and suffering.

Or Andy Warhol, whose frontal self-portrait in his “fright wig” became his most enduring image of facing mortality.

Or, more recently, Sarah Lucas: her body straight forward, a skull between her legs. The self-portrait as a fraught pastiche of sex and death.

Their self-scrutinizing portraits now circulate online, more widely than any print could. And Dürer’s does, too, downloadable in ultra-hi-res reproductions whose precision exceeds his engravings a thousand times over.

But Dürer never sold the 1500 self-portrait. A few of Nuremberg’s educated humanists saw it, but this vision of the artist as a near Messiah stayed largely out of the public eye until just before his death, in 1528.

Nor did Dürer translate it into a print for sale. He never made a single self-portrait print, in fact.

It was painted for posterity, not public communication. His new vision of artistic individuality didn’t require public approval. For he was already establishing that every “Dürer,” even a print, carries something essential of its maker.

Dürer’s monogram and Dürer’s eyes. New learning and new media. The artist’s perception of himself and the artist’s brand offered to the world.

This self-portrait was its own legitimation, with no need for likes. It was the work of an individual already facing the future head on.

Produced by Alicia DeSantis, Gabriel Gianordoli, Laura O’Neill, Josephine Sedgwick.

Advertisement

Home » Writers-House Blog » Self-Portrait Essays: Writing Tips

Self-Portrait Essays: Writing Tips

Self-portrait essays are aimed to describe the author. When writing a self-portrait essay, you should think of your audience and find the best approaches to describe yourself to its members. Use evocative images and specific details to make your description more vivid and engaging. Writing consultants from Writers-house.com service wrote this quick guide to help you write an outstanding self-portrait essay.

Think of Your Experiences

First, take your time and reflect on yourself. Think about your personality, your aspirations, and goals. What people you like to see around yourself? What you’d like to achieve in the future? We recommend that you choose a relatively challenging area to make your essay more engaging. For example, if you suffer from anxiety, you can describe how you overcome it to build relationships with other people. You may write about how you keep standing your ground despite the pressure from others. You may also write about your ethical, philosophical, or religious views. The main thing is to clearly define the focus of your essay.

Describe Yourself

You should begin your essay with an introduction. You need to introduce yourself and to provide a general description that will allow your readers to quickly learn the most important things about you. However, avoid simply listing the details about yourself because you don’t want the introduction to be boring. For example, if you want to say that you’re 16 years old, you can tell your readers how you and your parents moved to a new place 13 years ago, when you were three years old.

A good approach is to take a picture of yourself or take a look at your old pictures and describe what this picture can tell about you. For example, if you look happy on this picture, tell your readers about that day and why you were happy. A picture from the past is also a great opportunity to discuss how you’ve changed over time.

Tell Your Story

The main part of your essay must provide your readers with insights into the chosen area of yourself. When writing about some aspects of your life, make sure to illustrate them with specific events. Devote one body paragraph to one aspect, and provide some opinions. For example, you may mention a political argument with your family or explain what do you think about the overall quality of life in the town where you were born. You should show your personality and illustrate it with such details as events, locations, etc.

We recommend that you don’t use an opportunity to make your self-description more vivid by describing objects that surround your everyday life. For example, describe your room or tell your readers something about your hobbies and passions.

The Conclusion

The last paragraph of your essay should wrap it up and tie together all the pieces of information about yourself, creating a complete image. The conclusion is a great place to tell your readers what you think about your life now, and what you’re going to do in the future. We recommend that you don’t restate any information that you’ve already mentioned in the body of your essay. Don’t write a summary. Instead, provide a new perspective. Writing about your goals and plans is a great solution.

We also recommend that you conclude the essay by considering things you’ve been addressing in the introduction in a different light. If your introduction and conclusion are connected to each other, your essay will create a sense of completion. Make sure that different sections of your essay are logically connected to each other and your story is consistent.

Leave a Reply

Be the First to Comment!

Place your order

• Essay Writer
• Essay Writing Service
• Term Paper Writing
• Research Paper Writing
• Assignment Writing Service
• Cover Letter Writing
• CV Writing Service
• Resume Writing Service
• 5-Paragraph Essays
• Paper By Subjects
• Affordable Papers
• Prime quality of each and every paper
• Everything written per your instructions
• Native-speaking expert writers
• 100% authenticity guaranteed
• Timely delivery
• Attentive 24/7 customer care team
• Benefits for return customers
• Affordable pricing

• Entertainment
• Environment
• Information Science and Technology
• Social Issues

Home Essay Samples Art Selfie

Selfie as the Modernised Version of Self-Portrait

Introduction.

*minimum deadline

Cite this Essay

To export a reference to this article please select a referencing style below

• Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Japanese Art
• Michelangelo
• Art Movement

Related Essays

Need writing help?

You can always rely on us no matter what type of paper you need

*No hidden charges

100% Unique Essays

Absolutely Confidential

Money Back Guarantee

By clicking “Send Essay”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement. We will occasionally send you account related emails

You can also get a UNIQUE essay on this or any other topic

Thank you! We’ll contact you as soon as possible.

We use cookies to enhance our website for you. Proceed if you agree to this policy or learn more about it.

• Essay Database >
• Essays Samples >
• Essay Types >
• College Essay Example

Self-Portrait College Essays Samples For Students

20 samples of this type

If you're looking for an applicable method to simplify writing a College Essay about Self-Portrait, WowEssays.com paper writing service just might be able to help you out.

For starters, you should browse our extensive collection of free samples that cover most various Self-Portrait College Essay topics and showcase the best academic writing practices. Once you feel that you've determined the key principles of content presentation and drawn actionable ideas from these expertly written College Essay samples, putting together your own academic work should go much easier.

However, you might still find yourself in a situation when even using top-notch Self-Portrait College Essays doesn't allow you get the job done on time. In that case, you can get in touch with our experts and ask them to craft a unique Self-Portrait paper according to your individual specifications. Buy college research paper or essay now!

Free Self-Image Essay Sample

Example of object analysis essay.

http://www.getty.edu/art/gettyguide/artObjectDetails?artobj=344716 Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn Dutch, about 1628 Oil on copper 8 3/4 x 6 3/4 in. 2013.60

Introduction

Great art essays samples.

Don't waste your time searching for a sample.

Get your essay done by professional writers!

Just from $10/page

Good Artwork Discussion Essay Example

Frida kahlo essays example, example of essay on connoisseurship, part i. stylistic, damien hirst end game 2000-2004 glass stainless steel human skeletons and medical essay sample, free francisco goya essay: top-quality sample to follow, perfect model essay on sexuality and gender, queer designs on the works of warhol, rauschenberg, and rivers: free sample essay to follow, art history. comparing strengths and weaknesses of moma and metropolitan surrealist collections essays examples, free essay on use of self-concept by marketers in implementing effective marketing strategies, example of essay about art, good essay about chuck close: a portrait in progress, china and west in the eighteenth century essay example, human beings essay samples, complete name of professor, free ponty-ficating on van gogh essay sample, example of essay on art critiques, salvador dalis the persistence of memory essay examples, a comparison of john henry sylvesters portrait of te pehi kupe and essay, te pehi kupe's "self portrait.".

Password recovery email has been sent to [email protected]

Use your new password to log in

You are not register!

By clicking Register, you agree to our Terms of Service and that you have read our Privacy Policy .

Now you can download documents directly to your device!

Check your email! An email with your password has already been sent to you! Now you can download documents directly to your device.

or Use the QR code to Save this Paper to Your Phone

The sample is NOT original!

Short on a deadline?

Don't waste time. Get help with 11% off using code - GETWOWED

No, thanks! I'm fine with missing my deadline

Visiting Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion?

You must join the virtual exhibition queue when you arrive. If capacity has been reached for the day, the queue will close early.

Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History Essays

Portraiture in renaissance and baroque europe.

Annunciation Triptych (Merode Altarpiece)

Workshop of Robert Campin

Portrait of a Woman with a Man at a Casement

Fra Filippo Lippi

Portrait of a Carthusian

Petrus Christus

Tommaso di Folco Portinari (1428–1501); Maria Portinari (Maria Maddalena Baroncelli, born 1456)

Hans Memling

Erasmus of Rotterdam

Albrecht Dürer

François I (1494–1547), King of France

Girolamo della Robbia , or

Portrait of a Young Man

Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano)

Hermann von Wedigh III (died 1560)

Hans Holbein the Younger

Brother Gregorio Belo of Vicenza

Lorenzo Lotto

Filippo Archinto (born about 1500, died 1558), Archbishop of Milan

Titian (Tiziano Vecellio)

Alessandro Vittoria (1525–1608)

Paolo Veronese (Paolo Caliari)

Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino (1514–1574), With his Armor by Filippo Negroli

Portrait of a Young Man, Probably Robert Devereux (1566–1601), Second Earl of Essex

Nicholas Hilliard

Princess Elizabeth (1596–1662), Later Queen of Bohemia

Robert Peake the Elder

• Self-Portrait

Anthony van Dyck

Portrait of a Woman, Probably Susanna Lunden (Susanna Fourment, 1599–1628)

Peter Paul Rubens

Portrait of Charlotte Duchesne

Philippe de Champaigne

The Artist's Mother: Head and Bust, Three-Quarters Right

Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn)

The Fortune-Teller

Georges de La Tour

James Stuart (1612–1655), Duke of Richmond and Lennox

Don Gaspar de Guzmán (1587–1645), Count-Duke of Olivares

Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo

Rubens, Helena Fourment (1614–1673), and Their Son Frans (1633–1678)

Herman Doomer (ca. 1595–1650)

Juan de Pareja (ca. 1608–1670)

Velázquez (Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez)

The Jabach Family

Charles Le Brun

Jean Sorabella Independent Scholar

August 2007

A portrait is typically defined as a representation of a specific individual, such as the artist might meet in life. A portrait does not merely record someone’s features, however, but says something about who he or she is, offering a vivid sense of a real person’s presence.

The traditions of portraiture in the West extend back to antiquity and particularly to ancient Greece and Rome, where lifelike depictions of distinguished men and women appeared in sculpture and on coins. After many centuries in which generic representation had been the norm, distinctive portrait likenesses began to reappear in Europe in the fifteenth century. This change reflected a new growth of interest in everyday life and individual identity as well as a revival of Greco-Roman custom. The resurgence of portraiture was thus a significant manifestation of the Renaissance in Europe.

The earliest Renaissance portraits were not paintings in their own right, but rather important inclusions in pictures of Christian subjects. In medieval art , donors were frequently portrayed in the altarpieces or wall paintings that they commissioned, and in the fifteenth century painters began to depict such donors with distinctive features presumably studied from life. An example is Robert Campin’s Annunciation Triptych (Merode Altarpiece) ( 56.70 ) of about 1427–32, in which the man and woman in the left wing have the specificity characteristic of portraiture. Hans Memling’s portraits of Tommaso and Maria Portinari ( 14.40.626-27 ), painted around 1470, were also probably meant to flank the image of a saint in a small triptych, yet each likeness fills a whole panel and has the emphasis of a portrait in its own right.

One of the hallmarks of European portraiture is a sense of reality, an apparent intention to depict the unique appearance of a particular person. Each portrait is thus meant to express individual identity, but as Erwin Panofsky recognized, it also “seeks to bring out whatever the sitter has in common with the rest of humanity” (quoted in Shearer West, Portraiture [Oxford, 2004], p. 24). This second aspect of portraiture comes across in the considerable conservatism of the genre: most portraits produced in Renaissance and Baroque Europe follow one of a very small range of conventional formats. The profile view, which was favored in ancient coins, was frequently adopted in the fifteenth century, for instance, in Fra Filippo Lippi’s picture of a woman at a window, with a young man peeking in ( 89.15.19 ). The three-quarter face, which allows for greater engagement between sitter and viewer, was also widely favored. Petrus Christus used this format in his portrait of a Carthusian monk ( 49.7.19 ), which places the sitter in a simply characterized interior, with a horizontal element like a windowsill at the bottom and a glow of light in the left background. Italian painters at the turn of the sixteenth century embraced and refined this formula. Leonardo da Vinci’s celebrated portrait of Mona Lisa (ca. 1503–5; Musée du Louvre, Paris), for instance, increases the sense of connection between sitter and viewer by placing the hands on the window ledge; the enigmatic smile departs from the perfect composure seen elsewhere. Raphael’s widely imitated portrait of Baldassare Castiglione (ca. 1514; Louvre) uses the half-length format seen in the Mona Lisa but tightens the focus on the sitter by highlighting his lively face against a softly lit gray backdrop.

Mannerist artists adjusted these conventions to produce works like Bronzino’s portrait of a young man ( 29.100.16 ) painted in the 1530s: the figure again appears half-length, but the expression is aloof rather than serene, curious pieces of furniture replace the barrier along the lower border, and the hands—the right fingering the pages of a book and the left fixed on the hip—suggest momentary action and bravado rather than quiet dignity. The hand in the book confers an air of learned nonchalance on sitters both like and unlike Bronzino’s fashionable young man: it occurs, for instance, in Titian’s sensitive portrait of the aged archbishop Filippo Archinto, painted in the 1550s ( 14.40.650 ). The hand on hip frequently appears in portraits of rulers or would-be rulers, as in Van Dyck’s splendid likeness of James Stuart , painted around 1635 ( 89.15.16 ). The full-length format, always a costly and grandiose option, increases the sitter’s air of power and self-possession. Even greater magnificence is implicit in equestrian portraits, which also had Greco-Roman associations and were much favored in Renaissance and Baroque courts ( 52.125 ).

The conventional aspects of portraiture ensure that each example will bear some resemblance to the next, and yet this general similarity makes the distinctive qualities of each one the more salient. Sometimes the sitter’s beauty or demeanor is emphasized, as in Nicholas Hilliard’s miniature portrait of a young man ( 35.89.4 ) with luxuriant curls and a straightforward gaze. In other examples, a magnificent costume highlights the sitter’s wealth and fashionable taste ( 51.194.1 ). Other portraits suggest a sitter’s profession or interests by including possessions and attributes that characterize him as, for example, a humanist author ( 19.73.120 ), an accomplished sculptor ( 46.31 ), or an impassioned preacher ( 65.117 ). In addition to these rather public aspects of identity, portraits may also suggest the sitter’s inner psychology or state of mind. Hints of personality are especially evident in seventeenth-century portrayals of less exalted persons, such as Rembrandt’s portrait of the craftsman Herman Doomer ( 29.100.1 ), Velázquez’s picture of his assistant Juan de Pareja ( 1971.86 ), and Rubens’ seductive likeness of a woman who may have been his sister-in-law ( 1976.218 ).

In addition to recording appearances, portraits served a variety of social and practical functions in Renaissance and Baroque Europe. Miniatures were given as gifts of intimate remembrance, while portraits of rulers asserted their majesty in places from which they were absent. In courtly settings, portraits often had diplomatic significance. For instance, Jan van Eyck traveled to make portraits (now lost) of potential wives for his patron, Philip the Good of Burgundy , and Girolamo della Robbia made a ceramic portrait of Francis I ( 41.100.245 ) to adorn the residence of one of his comrades in arms. A portrait was often commissioned at a significant moment in someone’s life, such as betrothal , marriage , or elevation to an office. The making of a portrait typically involved a simple arrangement between artist and patron, but artists also worked on their own initiative, particularly when portraying friends and family ( 18.72 ; 1981.238 ; 1994.7 ). These portraits sometimes display a sense of affection, informality, or experimentation unusual in commissioned works. Finally, artists captured their own likenesses in self-portraits ( 49.7.25 ; 14.40.618 ), where they freely pursued their own ends, whether to claim elevated status, to showcase technical mastery, or to seek frank self-reflection.

Sorabella, Jean. “Portraiture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe.” In  Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History . New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/port/hd_port.htm (August 2007)

Further Reading

Brilliant, Richard. Portraiture . Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991.

Pope-Hennessy, John. The Portrait in the Renaissance . New York: Pantheon, 1966.

West, Shearer. Portraiture . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Additional Essays by Jean Sorabella

• Sorabella, Jean. “ Pilgrimage in Medieval Europe .” (April 2011)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Venetian Color and Florentine Design .” (October 2002)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Art of the Roman Provinces, 1–500 A.D. .” (May 2010)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Nude in Baroque and Later Art .” (January 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Nude in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance .” (January 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Nude in Western Art and Its Beginnings in Antiquity .” (January 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Monasticism in Western Medieval Europe .” (originally published October 2001, last revised March 2013)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Interior Design in England, 1600–1800 .” (October 2003)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Vikings (780–1100) .” (October 2002)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Painting the Life of Christ in Medieval and Renaissance Italy .” (June 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Birth and Infancy of Christ in Italian Painting .” (June 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Crucifixion and Passion of Christ in Italian Painting .” (June 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Carolingian Art .” (December 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Ottonian Art .” (September 2008)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Ballet .” (October 2004)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ Baroque Rome .” (October 2003)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Opera .” (October 2004)
• Sorabella, Jean. “ The Grand Tour .” (October 2003)

Related Essays

• Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519)
• Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) and Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641): Paintings
• Portrait Painting in England, 1600–1800
• Rembrandt (1606–1669): Paintings
• Velázquez (1599–1660)
• Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)
• Art and Love in the Italian Renaissance
• Burgundian Netherlands: Court Life and Patronage
• Elizabethan England
• The Face in Medieval Sculpture
• Frans Hals (1582/83–1666)
• Italian Renaissance Frames
• Jan van Eyck (ca. 1390–1441)
• Mannerism: Bronzino (1503–1572) and his Contemporaries
• Painting in Oil in the Low Countries and Its Spread to Southern Europe
• Painting the Life of Christ in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
• Paintings of Love and Marriage in the Italian Renaissance
• Paolo Veronese (1528–1588)
• Patronage at the Later Valois Courts (1461–1589)
• Prague during the Rule of Rudolf II (1583–1612)
• Roman Portrait Sculpture: The Stylistic Cycle
• Sixteenth-Century Painting in Emilia-Romagna
• Sixteenth-Century Painting in Lombardy
• Sixteenth-Century Painting in Venice and the Veneto
• Titian (ca. 1485/90?–1576)
• Balkan Peninsula, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Balkan Peninsula, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Central Europe (including Germany), 1400–1600 A.D.
• Central Europe (including Germany), 1600–1800 A.D.
• Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Florence and Central Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Florence and Central Italy, 1600–1800 A.D.
• France, 1400–1600 A.D.
• France, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Great Britain and Ireland, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Great Britain and Ireland, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Iberian Peninsula, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Iberian Peninsula, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Low Countries, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Low Countries, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Rome and Southern Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Rome and Southern Italy, 1600–1800 A.D.
• Venice and Northern Italy, 1400–1600 A.D.
• Venice and Northern Italy, 1600–1800 A.D.
• 15th Century A.D.
• 16th Century A.D.
• 17th Century A.D.
• Baroque Art
• Central Europe
• Central Italy
• Great Britain and Ireland
• Hermes / Mercury
• High Renaissance
• Iberian Peninsula
• Low Countries
• Medieval Art
• Miniature Painting
• Northern Italy
• Numismatics
• Oil on Canvas
• Preparatory Study
• Printmaking
• Relief Sculpture
• Renaissance Art
• Southern Italy

Artist or Maker

• Andrea del Sarto
• Campin, Robert
• Christus, Petrus
• Coypel, Charles Antoine
• De Champaigne, Philippe
• Della Robbia, Andrea
• Della Robbia, Girolamo
• Della Robbia, Luca
• Dolci, Carlo
• Doomer, Herman
• Dürer, Albrecht
• Hilliard, Nicholas
• Holbein, Hans, the Younger
• Købke, Christen
• La Tour, Georges de
• Le Brun, Charles
• Leonardo da Vinci
• Lippi, Fra Filippo
• Lotto, Lorenzo
• Martínez del Mazo, Juan Bautista
• Memling, Hans
• Parmigianino
• Peake, Robert, the Elder
• Rubens, Peter Paul
• Stuart, Gilbert
• Van Dyck, Anthony
• Van Eyck, Jan
• Van Rijn, Rembrandt
• Veronese, Paolo

Online Features

• 82nd & Fifth: “Tipping Point” by Stijn Alsteens
• The Artist Project: “Il Lee on Rembrandt van Rijn’s portraits”
• The Artist Project: “Julie Mehretu on Velázquez’s Juan de Pareja “
• The Artist Project: “Liliana Porter on Jacometto’s Portrait of a Young Man “
• The Artist Project: “Nina Katchadourian on Early Netherlandish portraiture”
• The Artist Project: “Paul Tazewell on Anthony van Dyck’s portraits”
• MetBlogs: Now at the Met: “The Jabach Portrait: Reflections on an Extraordinary Acquisition” by Keith Christiansen
• MetCollects: “ Everhard Jabach (1618–1695) and His Family by Charles Le Brun”

Toll-Free US & Canada 24/7:

1-770-659-7014

As a precautionary health measure for our support specialists in light of COVID-19, our phone support option will be temporarily unavailable. However, orders are processed online as usual and communication via live chat, messenger, and email is conducted 24/7. There are no delays with processing new and current orders.

Portrait Essay Example

Look through this Portrait Essay Example created by BookWormLab!

Compare ready samples with your papers and improve them

Want us to make a unique Creative Writing Examples for you?

How can I go about writing a portrait essay? In order to write a portrait essay, we must understand the meaning of a portrait. A portrait is a painting, a photograph, sculpture or any other artistic rendition of a person, in which the face and its expression is the main area of interest. A portrait custom essay could be easily written about how to paint or photograph a portrait. Also a portrait essay could be written about how to make a sculpture of a person.

Self Portrait Essay Writing

Since everyone may know the basic meaning of a portrait, a general portrait essay can be written very easily. But if we have to go deeper into what a portrait means to the artist, and what the artist is trying to bring out, then a portrait essay can be written on every portrait! For example, an entire essay could be written just about the Mona Lisa painting. Likewise, if you take sculptures by Michelangelo, you can write a portrait essay about each of his sculptures. Each portrait makes for an excellent portrait essay if carefully considered. Every portrait that exists, no matter how good or bad it may be to behold, it till carries a lot of meaning with it.

Portrait Character Essay Papers

Sometimes, an artist creates a self-image of himself. These images are called self portraits. When an artist creates a self portrait, usually there is a lot of meaning attached to it. A portrait essay explaining the nature of the portrait and the circumstances in which he created the portrait, would make an excellent portrait essay.

One could even write about the origin of self portraits, and what they meant to each civilisation in the portrait essays. In some cases, some people write articles like a portrait of the artist as a young man essays, which may talk about the life of the artist, with the main topic being his self portrait. Some good titles of essays of the modern era worth mentioning, include “portrait of the essay as a warm body” and “portrait of a teacher essay”. Portrait Essay Sample:

If you still think that writing a portrait essay is difficult, then you could always seek help. There are people like Professional Content Writers, who are specialised in writing custom essays including custom portrait essay. You could either buy portrait essay that is already written or ask them to write a portrait essay for you.

Even if you need a portrait essay for your websites or blogs, you can be assured that a portrait essay written by one of our writers, will get you a lot of internet traffic, as these essays will be keyword rich and at the same time, will be rich in content!

Plagiarism-free

• Art Appreciation Paper
• Pornography Essay

Related Essay Samples

Plato was a classical Greek philosopher and a student of Socrates. There is much literature about him and also many Plato essays about him. A Plato essay is not very hard to come by, and there are a lot of people who...

Essay on Intimate Relationships I am reviewing an article entitled “Boston Public Schools Will Distribute Condoms in All High Schools”. This article was written by Susan Jones and published on the CNS News website on June 20, 2013. In general, the article...

A Response Discussion about Urban problems Essay A Response Discussion about Urban problems that were most acute and what different solutions the leading religious figures and social reformers proposed In the pages of the American history, the different turn of events have...

Van Gogh’s self-portraits: what do they really reveal?

An exhibition at london’s courtauld gallery will be the most comprehensive ever held of vincent's paintings of himself.

Three of Van Gogh’s self-portraits: 1887, 1887 and 1889 Courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago (Creative Commons Zero); Detroit Institute of Arts (Bridgeman Images); and National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Adventures with Van Gogh is a weekly blog by Martin Bailey, our long-standing correspondent and expert on the artist. Published every Friday, his stories range from newsy items about this most intriguing artist to scholarly pieces based on his own meticulous investigations and discoveries. © Martin Bailey

It has just been announced that London’s Courtauld Gallery is to hold an ambitious exhibition on Van Gogh’s self-portraiture next spring (3 February-8 May 2022). Curated by the Courtauld’s curator Karen Serres, Van Gogh Self-Portraits will be the first show ever to cover the full chronological range, reassembling nearly half of his self-portrait works. I am writing an essay for the catalogue.

Few artists have produced as many self-portraits as Van Gogh. Among Vincent’s great predecessors, only his fellow Dutchman Rembrandt painted slightly more, and that was during a career lasting more than four times longer (with just over 40 paintings, compared with Van Gogh’s 35). As with Rembrandt, our view of Van Gogh’s appearance is almost entirely conditioned by the self-portraits. Only a single photograph of Vincent’s face survives, taken when he was 19.

When we look at Van Gogh’s self-portraits, so often we are hoping to get an insight into his personality and thoughts. This is because most of us are as fascinated by his extraordinary life as his amazing art.

Vincent felt that portraiture (and presumably self-portraiture) could do what photography had failed to achieve. He disliked what was then a fairly recent technological development, which presumably explains why we have no photographs of him as an adult.

As Vincent told his sister Wil: “I myself still find photographs frightful and don’t like to have any, especially not of people whom I know and love.” On another occasion he told her that “it isn’t easy to paint oneself”, but “one seeks a deeper likeness than that of the photographer”.

Van Gogh’s Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear (January 1889) © The Courtauld, London (Samuel Courtauld Trust)

In some paintings, such as the Courtauld’s Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear (the centrepiece of the coming exhibition), the artist is probing his inner self and presenting a facet of his life. Painted just under a month after he mutilated his ear, he does not shy away from the trauma he had suffered. He could have depicted the other side of his head or made the bandage appear less prominent.

Instead the artist presents a highly confrontational image. Its precise meaning must have been clear to Vincent, but it remains elusive for us today. Is it a cry for help? Or does it represent his determination to get back to work? Perhaps it is both.

Vincent includes his easel, on which he has placed an almost blank canvas (there are some vague marks on it, most likely the beginning of a flower still life). And on the other side of his head hangs a Japanese print (one which he had with him in the Yellow House in Arles). This represents an homage to the art of Japan, which was such an inspiration for him.

Despite Vincent’s fragile health, the Courtauld self-portrait is a very carefully composed image, certainly not the impulsive work of a “madman”. He shows the bandage on what appears to be his right side, although it was his left ear which he cut. Since he was looking at himself in a mirror, the sides are reversed in the painting. A detail which is often missed: the jacket was also observed in the mirror, so the button (which for a man is conventionally on the right side) appears to be on the left side in the Courtauld painting.

In Self-portrait as a Painter (February 1888), the last of his self-portraits done in Paris, Van Gogh advertises the skills that he had acquired during his two years in the French capital—and particularly his use of colour (the ginger hair contrasts with the complementary blue clothing). This time he meticulously went to the extra trouble of putting the button on the correct side, not as he would have seen it in his mirror.

Van Gogh’s Self-portrait as a Painter (February 1888) Courtesy of the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

On other occasions Van Gogh painted self-portraits because of a lack of models. He always found it difficult to get people to sit for him, probably a reflection of his awkward personality. Van Gogh also seems to have had a general aversion to painting close friends and family. Without models, the simplest way to develop as a portrait artist is to paint oneself, since this only requires the use of a mirror.

From the asylum, in September 1889 (when he painted the self-portrait now in Washington, DC, which will be coming to the exhibition), he wrote to Theo: “I’m working on two portraits of myself at the moment—for want of another model—because it’s more than time that I did a bit of figure work.”

On other occasions he made self-portraits to try out various technical explorations, such as colour contrasts or brushwork. These less ambitious works were sometimes more in the way of studies. This helps to explain why 27 of the 35 self-portraits date from his Paris period, when he was experimenting and developing his technique—moving away from the dark hues of his Dutch years to the Van Gogh we now know and love, with his exuberant colouring. But the Paris self-portraits also include some very fine examples.

Van Gogh’s Self-portrait with grey felt Hat (1887) Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

In 1889, while at the asylum, Vincent wrote in a letter to Theo: “It’s difficult to know oneself – but it’s not easy to paint oneself either.” He persevered with the challenge, pointing out that photographs become “faded more quickly than we ourselves”, while paintings remain “for many generations”.

Other Van Gogh news

“Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence”, published in paperback this week Courtesy of Frances Lincoln/Quarto

My book Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence is out in paperback this week. First published in 2016 by Frances Lincoln, it deals with the artist’s 15 months in Arles, where he produced his greatest work. The book, with considerable fresh material, includes his collaboration with Gauguin in the Yellow House, which ended so disastrously with Vincent’s mutilation of his ear.

Martin Bailey is the author of Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame (Frances Lincoln, 2021, available in the UK and US ). He is a leading Van Gogh specialist and investigative reporter for The Art Newspaper . Bailey has curated Van Gogh exhibitions at the Barbican Art Gallery and Compton Verney/National Gallery of Scotland. He was a co-curator of Tate Britain’s The EY Exhibition: Van Gogh and Britain (27 March-11 August 2019).

Martin Bailey’s recent Van Gogh books

Bailey has written a number of other bestselling books, including The Sunflowers Are Mine: The Story of Van Gogh's Masterpiece (Frances Lincoln 2013, available in the UK and US ), Studio of the South: Van Gogh in Provence (Frances Lincoln 2016, available in the UK and US ), Starry Night: Van Gogh at the Asylum (White Lion Publishing 2018, available in the UK and US ) and Van Gogh’s Finale: Auvers and the Artist’s Rise to Fame  (Frances Lincoln 2021, available in the UK and US ). Bailey's Living with Vincent van Gogh: the Homes and Landscapes that Shaped the Artist (White Lion Publishing 2019, available in the UK and US ) provides an overview of the artist’s life. The Illustrated Provence Letters of Van Gogh has been reissued (Batsford 2021, available in the UK and US ).

To contact Martin Bailey, please email [email protected] . Please note that he does not undertake authentications.

Read more from Martin's Adventures with Van Gogh blog   here .

Sunday, December 9, 2018

Dec 9: silas hansen on sarah einstein’s “self-portrait in apologies”.

• Songs on my Spotify playlist
• Books I’ve owned
• Choices I've made
• Favorite movies
• Movies I've fallen asleep during
• Books I didn’t finish
• Fast food menu items
• Toys still in my childhood bedroom
• New things I've tried
• Facebook profile photos
• Laundromats
• Bookshelves
• States I’ve visited
• Awards I’ve won/Awards I didn’t win
• Songs I've overplayed and now hate
• Celebrity crushes
• Browser history
• Dreams/nightmares
• Friendships
• Family members
• Birthday parties
• Places I've worked
• Jobs I quit
• Jobs I didn’t get
• Places I've lived
• T-shirts I've worn/owned
• Things in my car/purse/bedroom/backpack/etc.
• Texts/emails I didn't send
• Grocery lists
• Things I've cooked
• Cooking failures
• Netflix suggested categories/Hulu suggested categories
• High school superlatives I won/didn't win
• Colleges I didn't get into
• Classes I've taken/dropped/failed
• Halloween costumes
• Rejection letters
• Broken promises
• Hand-me-downs
• Missed opportunities
• Near misses
• Unpaid debts
• Things lost/found
• Jokes I've told
• Hairstyles/hair cuts
• Hair colors
• Drinks I've purchased/consumed
• Tinder matches
• Creepy FB messenger friend requests or DMs

Silas Hansen's essays have appeared in The Normal School, Colorado Review, Redivider, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing and literary publishing at Ball State University and is the nonfiction editor of Waxwing . You can find him at silashansen.net.

No comments:

Post a comment.