To "cheese" or not to "cheese?

[Mike Dodson]

Mari,

Thanks for the link.

I agree with much of what I read and I make it a practice not to paint smiles where the other facial features are distorted but I have met artists who think you can never paint smiles or grins and I think we miss out on conveying to the viewer a very important characteristic of the subject, particularly to those who will hopefully view our paintings after we are long gone.

Thanks again!

[Anne Bobroff-Hajal]

Hello, Mike, I very much agree that if we never paint our subjects smiling, "we miss out on conveying to the viewer a very important characteristic of the subject, particularly to those who will hopefully view our paintings after we are long gone." Generally I feel that human expression is more important than purely physical appearance in creating our bonds with each other. So to me, capturing the subject's unique facial expression is a critical element of portraiture. And the smile creates some of the closest human bonding of all. So I believe it shouldn't be excluded from portraiture by hard and fast rules - especially when the subject is a humorous, outgoing person, as you describe your daughter. A portrait of a person like this should capture her outgoing spirit as much as her physical appearance.

As some one new to this forum, I'm realizing this is an old thread, and I'm not sure what the etiquette is in pursuing it years later! However, the reason I launched into this is that I would love if you could provide names of some specific examples of the Sargent paintings you were referring to - I'd very much like to find & view them.

Thanks,
Anne

blog.AnneBobroffHajal.com
AnneBobroffHajal.com

[Julie Deane]

I respect the reasons given for not smiling, but if the child is always smiling and this most accurately shows the personality, I'd go for it.
It does distort the face so that the eyes are smaller and the cheeks are fuller, though.

The teeth can be de-emphasized even in a full grin, through the use of lowered constrast, blurred edges, and not showing full details.

[Richard Bingham]

Probably the most compelling reason the "traditional" portraits of the past did not show many wide, toothy smiles is the difficulty of having the sitter "hold that pose" when working from the life. The spontaneous, sincere expression in a smile can rapidly become a pained grimace . . . then there was the lack of dental care . . .

A huge pitfall for the modern portraitist is all the difficulty that attends working from reference photos as opposed to working from the life. No doubt you've read lengthy discussion of the pros and cons on these boards.

I agree heartily with Julie. At least twice, I feel I made a misjudgment of my sitter by not painting them with a smile that flashed some teeth (I tend not to favor "snapshot" smiles). The demeanor and personality of these individuals was such that in fact, it was in their character always to be smiling broadly - but not feigned, and naturally spontaneous.

[Mike Dodson]

Sargent........

[Mike Dodson]

Hals was a master of the "fleeting" moment. No photos! Amazing!

[Alexandra Tyng]

There are portraits that show teeth but the person isn't smiling broadly, or even smiling at all. Then there are others that show the person smiling, sometimes with a closed mouth, sometimes with an open mouth. I just looked through Sargent's collected works and found all sorts of variations, two of which I posted below.

I have never been a special fan of painting people with wide toothy grins, mostly because it looks static to me. Sargent relied on direct observation to paint, and his smiling people don't look static to me. Although he captured a moment in time, he probably waited for the moment to occur many times over, kind of like painting surf. The wide grin caught on a photo is great as a photo, but in my opinion it doesn't usually translate into paint that well.

That's not to say I think one should never paint a person smiling! I think there are all sorts of ways to do this. If the smile is a major identifying factor of a person (and I can think of several people for which that is true) then I could see the smiling expression being a good choice for a portrait. Sargent makes you feel this is true for Mrs. Darley Boit (below, image #1). She looks like a jolly, sociable matron.

I'm starting a portrait right now of someone who is inseparable from her smile, so I've decided to try and catch it in the moment of becoming, rather than fully blossomed. We shall see. . .!