Portraits I Am Currently Enjoying

On April 11, 2013 by Tim Newman

This post is just portraits with 17th Century vibes. The moodiness and bleak affect of them always makes me feel happy somehow. If you don’t like the sound of that, move along.

First we have a self portrait of an unknown 17th-century person. I love the ambiguity, and there’s a lot of symbolism — not that I can decode them. But is she happy or sad? Is she smiling? Grimacing mildly? Hard to tell.

This is Nicolaes Maes‘ Portrait of a Gentleman:

Here’s another of Nicolaes’ portraits for good measure, it’s called ‘portrait of a man in a wig’, not sure why:

CLICK HERE FOR PAINTINGS OF MEN WITH BEARDS

Imagine having that monk painting above your TV. It’s dark, moody, and funny which is a rare combo. I’m thinking about getting it on a T-shirt. Who wants one? UPDATE: I now have the T-shirt. Jealous?:

This guy in the turban below is by an unknown artist from the Dutch school of painting and it was on sale for £2,500 in 2010.

I don’t know who this guy is either but he looks formidable, but what’s he doing with his left hand? Have we caught him milliseconds after his penultimate throw in Yahtzee? Is that why he looks so pensive?:

Below is a painting of the time-travelling drummer from the hit band Black Zeppelin Stone. Not really, it’s John Evelyn, a chap who wrote cultural and artistically driven diaries in the 1600’s.

He knew Samuel Pepys and saw the deaths of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, the last Great Plague of London, and the Great Fire of London. No wonder he looks so wistful.

Here’s another painting of him because I like his face, this one’s by Hendrick Van der Borcht. Borcht was a Flemish engraver and painter of flowers and fruit, who mostly chilled in Germany. It’s slightly less flattering but he’s still got that lost look in his eye that I love.

The next scribble for this eve is a painting of the guy from Queens of the Stone Age. Only joking, of course, it’s Diego Rodriguez Velazquez’s portrait of King Philip IV as you well know.

I’ll leave you with some portraits of the Habsburgs. They were an intermingled bunch that passed big jawlines throughout the ages. They started in Switzerland but their marriages and power trawled Europe’s monarchy until the blood line died out in 1780. For the best.

Charles II