Portrait Paintings
2010s Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Acrylic
2010s American Realist Portrait Paintings
Linen, Oil
2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Wood Panel, Acrylic
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Wood Panel, Oil
2010s Other Art Style Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Oil
Artist Comments
My work is about the rediscovery of the poetry and beauty in the everyday, and this painting was inspired by my view from a pier of the pedestrians and bicycl...
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Portrait Paintings
Oil
2010s Expressionist Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Acrylic
2010s Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Acrylic, Mixed Media, Wood Panel
Late 20th Century Neo-Expressionist Portrait Paintings
Mixed Media
Artist Comments
In this piece entitled Lose Yourself the audience takes the bartender's view. It is another of my bar scenes where the human figu...
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Acrylic
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Oil
2010s Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Cotton Canvas, Oil
2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Oil
2010s Portrait Paintings
Mixed Media
Artist Comments
This is another work where my focus is on an ordinary subject matter depicted with strong color and sparkling light effects.
About the Artist
Romanian-born painter Diana Chelaru’s paintings are colorful and contemporary interpretations of human emotion. For Diana, art is a means of communication. “It is how I express my thoughts, hopes, regrets and joys,” she says. Though she gets great pleasure from applying paint to canvas, it is the expression of emotions that she finds to be most important. Diana’s style is influenced by Byzantine mosaics as well as Gustav Klimt’s subject matter and use of decorative patterns within his compositions. Each artwork is created intuitively, resulting in paintings that speak to the soul.
Evening in a Bar...
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Acrylic
2010s Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Cotton Canvas, Acrylic
21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Expressionist Portrait Paintings
Oil
1990s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Found Objects, Pastel, Acrylic
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Mixed Media
Artist Comments
This contemporary figurative painting was inspired by my aerial view of the pedestrians below from my hotel balcony in Paris. My signature Pixel Impressionist...
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Portrait Paintings
Oil
2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Acrylic
21st Century and Contemporary Impressionist Portrait Paintings
Spray Paint, Canvas
21st Century and Contemporary Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Acrylic, Canvas
21st Century and Contemporary Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Oil
2010s Impressionist Portrait Paintings
Oil
Artist Comments
This is "Who Are These Angels CVI," an original oil painting on gallery wrapped canvas.
About the Artist
Naoko Paluszak began her career by ...
21st Century and Contemporary Expressionist Portrait Paintings
Oil
21st Century and Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Gouache
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Gouache
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Gouache
21st Century and Contemporary Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Acrylic, Canvas
21st Century and Contemporary Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Acrylic, Canvas
20th Century Other Art Style Portrait Paintings
Linen, Ink
1910s Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Oil
Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Mixed Media, Watercolor, Archival Paper
1980s Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Acrylic, Canvas
Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Acrylic
Early 2000s Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Oil, Canvas, Lithograph
1950s Portrait Paintings
Board, Oil
20th Century Other Art Style Portrait Paintings
Panel, Acrylic
1950s Other Art Style Portrait Paintings
Oil, Canvas
1920s Portrait Paintings
Paper, Gouache
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Acrylic
21st Century and Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Oil, Linen
2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Acrylic
2010s Portrait Paintings
Oil
2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Oil
21st Century and Contemporary American Realist Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Oil
21st Century and Contemporary Realist Portrait Paintings
Oil, Canvas
2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Textile, Thread, Plexiglass, Mixed Media, Wood Panel
2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Oil
2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Acrylic
2010s Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Mixed Media, Stencil
2010s Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Mixed Media, Spray Paint, Acrylic, Stencil
1950s Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Oil
2010s Contemporary Portrait Paintings
Canvas, Acrylic
2010s Surrealist Portrait Paintings
Magazine Paper
1960s Modern Portrait Paintings
Mixed Media, Oil
2010s Pop Art Portrait Paintings
Mixed Media
Shop Antique and Vintage Portrait Paintings
An elegant and sophisticated decorative touch in any living space, portrait paintings have remained popular throughout the years and are widely loved pieces of art for display in many homes today.
Portrait paintings are at least as old as ancient Egypt, where realistic, lifelike depictions of the recently deceased — commonly known as “mummy portraits” — were painted on wooden panels and affixed to mummies as part of the burial tradition.
For centuries, painters have used portraiture as a means of expressing a subject’s nobility, societal status and authority. Portraits were given as gifts in Renaissance Europe, and a portrait artist might have been commissioned to help mark a significant occasion such as a wedding or a promotion to high office. Prior to the advent of photography, which eventually replaced painted portraits as a quicker and more efficient way of capturing a person’s essence, the subject of a portrait had to sit for hours until the painter had finished. And during the 18th century in particular, if an artist commissioned for a portrait struggled with how to adequately memorialize and capture a subject’s likeness, sometimes a portrait painting wasn’t completed for up to a year.
Whether it’s part of the gallery-style approach to your living-room or dining-room walls or merely inspiration as you devise an eye-grabbing color scheme in your home, a portrait painting is a timeless decorative object for any interior. A landscape painting or sculpture might give you the kind of insight into a specific region of the world or a different culture that you can ascertain only through art. Similarly, when you take the time to learn about the subject of a portrait painting that you bring into your home — the sitter’s history, the relationship between the sitter and the artist should one exist, the story of how the portrait came to be — that work can become intensely personal in addition to its place as an object for an art-hungry corner of your apartment or house.
On 1stDibs, visit a vast collection of famous portrait paintings or works by emerging artists. Search by medium to find the right portrait paintings for your home in oil paint, synthetic resin paint and more. Find portrait paintings in a variety of styles, too, including contemporary, Impressionist and Pop art, or search by artist to find unique works created by painters such as Mark Beard, Steve Kaufman and Montse Valdés.
Read More
Cecilia Vicuña Merges Politics, Science and Spirituality in Her Poetic Art
The Chilean creator, who has been living in exile in New York for decades, is having a major moment, receiving the biggest exhibitions, commissions and awards an artist could dream of.
In Christopher Spitzmiller’s New York Homes, His Love of Dogs Is on Full Display
The ceramist, designer and gentleman farmer tells us about the collection of antique dog art he has spread across a New York City apartment and a Greek Revival farmhouse in the Hudson Valley.
This Wiener Werkstätte Master Made Everything into Art
Koloman Moser smashed the conservative conventions of art and design in fin-de-siècle Vienna. On the 100th anniversary of his death, the Austrian designer is being celebrated for his radically modern creations.
A Rare Q&A with American Legend Alex Katz
On the eve of a new exhibition just north of New York City, the nonagenarian contemporary-art icon talked with ‘Introspective’ about his long and ongoing career, the development of his signature style and his rather malleable definition of realism.