2nd Year - 11: Portraiture Research

I am going to look at different time frames in society and discuss examples of portraiture used, discussing the social implications behind this type of art and whether or not it is to show individuals or whether it is part of society as a whole.

James Gunn was an artist who lived from 1893 til 1964. For the start of his career he was a landscape painter and he spent a lot of time travelling and exhibiting his works until around 1929 where he became increasingly devoted solely to portrait paintings. My first example of portraits we can read into to discuss the social context at the time is “Conversation Piece (G.K. Chesterton; Maurice Baring; Hilaire Belloc)”. This painting from 1932 is a portrait of 3 men; the idea for this painting is said to have come to Gunn as an idea of a gift for Hilaire Belloc's 60^th Birthday. This was at a time just before the second world war where men were in charge and and the money makers of the family while their wives were expected to stay at home and take care of the family and home. It wasn’t until the start of the war when women started to become empowered but until then it was the gentlemen of the country who ran it.

Hilaire Belloc was a writer, one of the most prolific in England at the time and was well known for a variety of things as well as a writer. He was also known for his poetry, his work as a soldier and a political activist, to name a few. These attributes lead him to become quite high up within the english heirarchy and so was quite well off in terms of wealth. We can see this is reflected in the image. Several things indicate wealth in the image and thus reflect on society and there place within it. One of these indicators are the large gold frame for a painting commission. At the time not many people could afford to commission paintings in general, much less one of that size and this suggests that the people in the image value traditional painting which could suggest that they want to show other people how cultured they are. Another thing that suggests wealth and is possibly the most obvious is the attire; the suits the men are wearing suggest class, an outwards portrayal of being a gentleman. Men wear suits to show the rest of the world that they are respectable, successful and important. The shoes we can see are gentleman's shoes with a high shine suggesting they treat them well and get them cleaned and shined regularly.

The pose of the figures also enforces a feeling of power and success as they don't acknowledge the audience. The figures are too enthralled in what is being written down or noted which suggests it has more importance than the everyday spectator which creates a feeling of the men being more important or of a higher class than the viewers. The final component suggesting wealth in the image is the room itself, with clean walls and a high quality finish with the dado rail that cuts through the center of the wall, its use is to protect the wall from chairs damaging it. The act of protecting something suggests it has worth and therefore the house must be quite valuable and because it has clean walls this suggests the house gets cleaned, possibly by someone who it hired to do so.

By analyzing this painting we can see that it falls in to both categories where it does depict its subjects but there is also a social context for it as well. It represents the individuals as part of a larger group in society within the higher classes.