Famous Portrait Artists – The Best Portrait Painting Artists Ever

The human as a subject in art has been at the forefront of the fields of painting, printmaking, sculpture, and photography since well before the Middle Ages. Capturing a portrait of someone is an intimate act in itself and has become a genre of art and practice of its own, such that some of the greatest masters in portraiture have been able to capture their subjects in such a profound manner that it is impossible to peel your eyes away from the work of art. This article will introduce you to some of the world’s most influential portraiture artists from art history and the contemporary era.

Top 15 Most Famous Portrait Artists of All Time

For around 5,000 years, prominent figures and regular members of society have adopted portraiture as a tradition that is upheld for familial archive purposes and for the immortalization of a subject or legacy left behind. Quite often, we associate portraits with autobiographies, celebrities, politicians, and funerary practices but in art history, the act of portraiture involves the artist as well as the third party, the viewer, in an act of observation highlighted by the gaze.

Portraiture is an intimate act that holds much meaning for both the artist engaged in the genre and the subject, or sitter, that faces the artist and the viewer.

There are many angles from which one can examine the genre of portraiture as seen in the works of some of the best portraiture artists below. We will now introduce you to some of the world’s most famous portrait artists in art history as well as a few leading modern portrait painters.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519)

Holding both the title of one of the best artists of the High Renaissance and the creator of one of the world’s most recognized portraits, Leonardo da Vinci is an important portraiture artist who cannot be overlooked. Although his talents extended beyond the realm of art, Da Vinci was known to be an innovative polymath who strived towards development and understanding around the human form, the perfection of the human form, anatomy, and biology, making it a perfect example of the intersections between art and science.

One of his most famous portraits, the Mona Lisa, was painted in 1503 and received global recognition after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in 1911.

Presumed self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1512), located in the Royal Library of Turin in Turin, Italy; Leonardo da Vinci, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Today, the portrait remains one of the Louvre’s greatest tourist attractions, receiving millions of visitors each year. Other famous portraits by Leonardo da Vinci include Portrait of Ginevra Benci (1474 – 1478) and La Scapigliata (1506 – 1508).

Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526 – 1593)

Giuseppe Arcimboldo is one of the most well-known portrait painting artists whose work can easily be identified by its colorful appearance that makes use of fruits and various other objects to represent a human sitter. Arcimboldo was a conventional court artist who served three Holy Roman Emperors during his tenure and his works in portraiture are not to be missed.

His still-life portraits served as entertainment for the court since it was amusing to see a human figure painted entirely out of a whimsical arrangement of fruits and vegetables.

Vertumnus (1590 – 1591) by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, located in the Skokloster Castle in Sweden; Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

One of Arcimboldo’s most famous portraits includes Vertumne (1590), which depicts the portrait of the German Emperor, Rudolf II, and each feature is painted with as much detail and care as an artist would pay attention to a regular human portrait painting. The painting formed part of Arcimboldo’s series called The Seasons, which began a few years earlier. Some of the elements he uses for the emperor’s features include green beans as eyebrows, apples as cheeks, red fruits as his lips, and a pear for the sitter’s nose.

The emperor is positioned against a plain black background with his head tilted at three-quarters to the viewer’s left.

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606 – 1669)

Rembrandt van Rijn is one of art history’s most famous portrait painting artists and was extremely talented at oil painting in the Baroque style. Often referred to as Rembrandt, the artist is known to have produced some of the world’s most expensive paintings that include self-portraits.

In a way, Rembrandt was a master of capturing his own portrait, often styling himself with a fashionable hat.

Self-portrait (1659) by Rembrandt van Rijn, located in the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., United States; Rembrandt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The portraits that Rembrandt captured of other subjects featured sitters appearing pensive, in a state of deep contemplation, or lost in a daydream and captured with a dramatic flair using highly contrasting painting techniques. Some of the Dutch artist’s most famous portraits include a portrait of his father called Bust of an old man with a fur hat (1630), Portrait of Saskia van Uylenburgh (1633 – 1634), and Young Girl at the Window (1654).

Johannes Vermeer (1632 – 1675)

Another successful Dutch master of painting portraits in the classical Baroque style is Johannes Vermeer, who is most famous for his portrait known as the Girl with a Pearl Earring, painted in 1665 and regarded as the artist’s best masterpiece. The unforgettable image of the Girl with a Pearl Earring is known to many for its beautiful emphasis on the sitter’s glance as if called from behind, and the illumination of her pearl earring and the light that touches her face to highlight the glimmer in her youthful eyes.

Girl with a Pearl Earring was also featured in popular culture as the main subject for the 2003 film Girl with a Pearl Earring.

The Milkmaid (c. 1660) by Johannes Vermeer, located in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Johannes Vermeer, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

While the portrait is a complete masterpiece, the Dutch artist did not produce as many works as one would imagine for a great master. Vermeer took his time in producing paintings and is also known for being the artist behind one of the stolen paintings, The Concert (1664), of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist in 1990.

Today, approximately 34 paintings have been credited to the artist.

Gustav Klimt (1862 – 1918)

Born in 1862, famous Austrian artist Gustav Klimt created many masterpieces over his lifetime, including famous portraits such as Der Blinde (1896) and Judith and the Head of Holofernes (1901). The Austrian artist was a master of the Art Nouveau style, which he adapted to form his signature style.

This involved gilded paintings accompanied by geometric design elements and decorative symbols.

Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (Adele Bloch-Bauer I) (1907) by Gustav Klimt, located in the Neue Galerie in New York, United States; Gustav Klimt, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Klimt was also a member of the Vienna Secession movement and drew inspiration from Japanese art, architecture, and the female form. Among his best portrait paintings are other works such as Portrait of Hermine Gallia (1904), housed at the National Gallery, and Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1907), which is one of his best-selling portrait paintings that sold for $135 million in 2006.

Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973)

Pablo Picasso was a man of many talents, including painting portraits. As a champion in Cubism and Modern art, Picasso’s style was influenced by a variety of his experiences and encounters with African art, overlapping geometric planes, assemblages, Surrealist visuals, and other areas of experimentation.

Picasso’s rendition of the human form in his portrait paintings was not traditional and often made use of flat colors, which was a characteristic unique to his style.

Portrait photograph of Pablo Picasso, in front of his painting The Aficionado at Villa Les Clochettes, Sorgues, France, summer 1912; AnonymousUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Some of Pablo Picasso’s most famous portraits include Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906), which is now housed at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, and some more Abstract, Cubist portraits such as Woman with Mustard Pot (1910).

Ryūsei Kishida (1891 – 1929)

Ryūsei Kishida was a famous Japanese portrait painter who specialized in Yōga portraiture. Yōga-styled portraiture was the term ascribed to the painting of Japanese themes and subjects using the conventions of the Western art context, including techniques and mediums.

Kishida was born in Tokyo around 1891 and studied Western art under the guidance of Kuroda Seiki, who was also a prominent Japanese artist who is credited with introducing and expanding the Japanese’ knowledge of Western art theory.

Portrait of Reiko Sitting (1919) by Ryūsei Kishida, located in the Pola Museum of Art in Hakone, Japan; Pola Museum of Art, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By 1910, Kishida was exhibiting his artworks at the Bunten annual government exhibition. Soon, his works began to reflect the style of Plein-air paintings and he soon joined the White Birch Society, which was an influential Japanese literary coterie, where he encountered styles such as Cubism and Fauvism. Kishida even formed his group in support of post-Impressionism and Humanism called the Fyūzankai society, which shortly disbanded after two exhibitions.

Some of his best portraits are known to be Portrait of Reiko Sitting (1919), of which one of the variations of his portraits of Reiko with a shawl fetched approximately 360 million yen in 2000.

Grant Wood (1891 – 1942)

Grant DeVolson Wood is the painter behind one of America’s most famous art portraits of the 20th century, American Gothic (1930). Famous for his depictions of the rural American midwest, Wood was also a leader in the American Regionalism movement, which was understood as a Realist Modern art movement that featured subjects about rural American towns in the midwestern era.

American Gothic is one of the most famous art portraits executed in 1930 and depicts two figures modeled by the artist’s sister and their dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby.

American Gothic (1930) by Grant Wood, located in the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, United States; Grant Wood, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The woman appears dressed in a colonial-styled print apron and the man is wearing overalls covered with a suit jacket as he holds a pitchfork. This painting has featured in popular culture as a parody reference and was also displayed at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris and the Royal Academy of Arts in London throughout 2016 and 2017.

The subjects of the painting are often mistaken for a farmer and his wife but Wood intended for the figures to represent a farmer and his daughter.

Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954)

One of the greatest icons of Mexican culture, painting, and Surrealism, Frida Kahlo is one of the world’s most famous portrait artists whose life and personal experiences greatly informed her best masterpiece. From an early age, Kahlo displayed much artistic talent and often painted portraits of her close friends and family.

Due to an automobile accident at the young age of 18, Kahlo took to painting to express her struggle with chronic pain and highlight many of the experiences she endured and celebrated for the rest of her life.

Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) by Frida Kahlo; Ambra75, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Kahlo’s experimentation with etching, fresco painting, and the exploration of different narratives allowed her to develop her iconic style as seen in her portrait paintings Portrait of Diego Rivera (1937), Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) and The Wounded Deer (1946), which showcase her integration of symbolism, Mexican culture, and personal figures of interest.

Lucian Michael Freud OM CH (1922 – 2011)

The grandson of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, and a popular British portraitist, Lucian Freud was one of the most notable painters of the 20th century. Freud was a specialist in painting portraits of both animals and humans and this can be seen in works such as Grey Gelding (2003) and Eli and David (2005-2006).

Freud painted subjects that played a significant role in his everyday life and later featured fellow artists and figures such as Francis Bacon and Kitty Garman (daughter of Jacob Epstein and Freud’s first wife).

Some of Freud’s best-known portraits include Man with Thistle (1946) and Girl with a Kitten (1947), the latter of which was part of a series of paintings of his wife, executed using microscopic sable brushes that evoked a sense of the style associated with the Early Netherlandish painting style.

Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987)

Andy Warhol is one of America’s most famous modern portrait painters of the Pop art movement who achieved much fame and recognition at the height of the 20th century. Warhol specialized in cinema, photography, and silkscreen printmaking.

His silkscreen printmaking resulted in some of the most iconic portraits of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Edie Sedgwig, the latter of whom was one of Warhol’s “superstars”.

Photograph of Andy Warhol with Archie, his pet Dachshund, in 1973; Jack Mitchell, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

His best-known portrait of Marilyn Monroe called the Marilyn Diptych (1962) is a silkscreen painted diptych of the celebrity icon composed of 50 images of Monroe’s face taken from the 1953 film Niagara. The portrait was finished only weeks after the actress’ death toward the end of 1962.

Zanele Muholi (1972 – Present)

Zanele Muholi is a South African Contemporary photographer and visual activist whose artistic practice is predominantly centered around the use of photography to build an “archive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) individuals” and to re-historicize the history of Black queer and trans-visual narratives that exist in South Africa for “the world to know of our resistance and existence at the height of hate crimes in the country and beyond”.

Muholi’s portraits, as seen in their 365-portrait series Somnyama Gonyama (2015), are highly recognizable for their signature high-contrast visuals that highlight the artist’s skin color and draw attention to the history of Black women across the world.

The title of the series translates to “Hail the Dark Lioness” and features various identities or alter egos of the artist that are incredibly personal yet also politically charged. According to Maurice Berger, a cultural historian, Muholi’s self-portraits also challenge stereotypical beauty standards implemented by the West that negate people of color.

The series debuted at the New York Yancey Richardson Gallery in 2015 and was also featured on the digital billboard in Times Square during the 2017 Performa Biennial festival. Muholi has also been at the forefront of queer youth development, educational activism, and women empowerment programs to facilitate and guide individuals on their journey of documenting their lives and navigating the stigma around homosexuality among communities.

Some of Muholi’s most famous portraits include Bona, Charlottesville (2015), Bester I, Mayotte (2015), and Somnyama Ngonyama II, Oslo (2015) from their Somnyama Gonyama series.

Amy Sherald (1973 – Present)

Amy Sherald is one of America’s most influential Contemporary portrait artists, best known for her critical approach to examining issues around race and identity in America. Sherald partook in numerous global residencies and is famous for being the first Black female artist to create a presidential portrait for the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C.

One of the most popular Contemporary portraits executed by Sherald was of the former first lady, Michelle Obama in First Lady Michelle Obama, painted in 2018.

Sherald’s work makes use of grayscale tones as the dominant value to depict the skin of her sitters and this highlights one of her intentions around breaking the ever-prevalent issue around the identification of individuals based on their skin color. Sherald further stated that she wants “people to be able to imagine a life outside the circumscribed stereotype or identity that is often controlled by various circumstances (including environment, class, race)”.

Other famous portraits by the modern portrait painter include paintings such as They call me Redbone but I’d rather be Strawberry Shortcake (2009), Welfare Queen (2012), and most recently, For love, and for country (2022).

Shadi Ghadirian (1974 – Present)

Shadi Ghadirian is one of the most impactful Contemporary portrait artists of the 21st century who captures the roles of Islamic women through her medium of photography and the portraiture genre. The Tehran-based artist uses portraiture to highlight the lived experiences of women in modern-day Iran who still live under the rule of Sharia law. Ghadirian’s most famous art portraits such as Untitled from the Like Every Day series (2000 – 2001), highlight a positive female identity with humor as the backdrop to draw attention to the traditional roles that women from the Middle East and various other parts of the world have defined for women.

The artist also makes use of various household items as readymade puns to recontextualize these objects and present fictional characters.

Her staged portraits use everyday household objects to amplify the anonymity of the figure and highlight suggestive narratives to guide the viewer toward identifying misogynistic typecasts. In one of her portraits, Ghadirian makes use of a colander covering her face to represent the phrase “a woman who is all mouth”, associated with a human sieve and understood as the neighborhood gossiper, “endlessly broadcasting” news “like a loudspeaker”.

Kehinde Wiley (1977 – Present)

Kehinde Wiley is an American Contemporary artist to keep on your radar. Having produced a portrait of the former United States president Barack Obama, this New-York based portraiture artist and sculptor add a twist to the genre of portraiture through his reinvention of stylistic elements and approach to imagery. Wiley adopts classical Renaissance frameworks of portraiture and reinterprets them through a Contemporary approach aimed at readdressing the power dynamic held in the portrayal of predominantly white and Western/European figures of power with prominent individuals of color, who are often underrepresented.

Coupled with this approach to reframing the politics around portraiture, Wiley also incorporates colorful, decorative backgrounds to his portraits.

These include floral backgrounds, which serve as an interesting juxtaposition and open up Contemporary modes of viewing and thinking around the portrayal of masculinity and what it means for young men of color. Some of Wiley’s most captivating and critical portrait paintings include Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps (2005), Femme Piquée par un Serpent (2008), and Portrait of Barack Obama (2017).

The evolution and adaptation of the genre of portraiture are evident in the works of different portraiture artists as seen above. Portraiture can be used to capture different aspects of a subject and draw attention to larger socio-political issues and contexts that inform the making of the work. Portraits are personal forms of art, and the personal in art holds power.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Portraiture in Art?

Portraiture in art refers to the act of capturing a subject’s visual appearance and even personality through the use of different art forms such as photography, painting, and sculpture. It is a rendering of the subject’s appearance as a form of identification, tribute, commemoration, or subjective interpretation by an artist for display, decoration, immortalization, sale, or keepsake.

What Is the Significance of Portraiture in Art?

The significance of portraiture in art can be attributed to its ability as an art form to serve as a symbol of beauty, virtue, power, and characteristics of the sitter in a portrait. The practice of portraiture also invites important questions about the relationship between the sitter, the artist, and the viewer.

What Are the Four Types of Portraiture in Photography?

The four types of portraiture in photography are also referred to as the four approaches to practicing portraiture using the medium of photography and include the creative, constructionist, candid, and environmental approaches.

What Is the Most Expensive Portrait in the World?

The most expensive portrait in the world is believed to be a portrait of Jesus Christ by Leonardo da Vinci, titled Salvator Mundi (c. 1500), which sold for $450.3 million in 2017 at Christie’s in New York.

Jordan Anthony( Content Editor, Art Writer, Photographer )

Jordan Anthony is a Cape Town-based film photographer, curator, and arts writer. She holds a Bachelor of Art in Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, where she explored themes like healing, identity, dreams, and intuitive creation in her Contemporary art practice. Jordan has collaborated with various local art institutions, including the KZNSA Gallery in Durban, the Turbine Art Fair, and the Wits Art Museum. Her photography focuses on abstract color manipulations, portraiture, candid shots, and urban landscapes. She’s intrigued by philosophy, memory, and esotericism, drawing inspiration from Surrealism, Fluxus, and ancient civilizations, as well as childhood influences and found objects. Jordan is working for artfilemagazine since 2022 and writes blog posts about art history and photography.

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