Definition of Portrait

Portrait

The likeness of a person, painted, drawn, or engraved; commonly, a representation of the human face painted from real life.

Hence, any graphic or vivid delineation or description of a person; as, a portrait in words.

To portray; to draw.

Related Definitions:

Any, As, Commonly, Delineation, Description, Draw, Drawn, Engraved, Face, From, Graphic, Hence, Human, In, Life, Likeness, Of, Or, Painted, Person, Portrait, Portray, Real, Representation, The, To, Vivid

Portrait Quotations

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.
Oscar Wilde

There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk.
Charles Dickens

A man's manners are a mirror in which he shows his portrait.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

When you start with a portrait and search for a pure form, a clear volume, through successive eliminations, you arrive inevitably at the egg. Likewise, starting with the egg and following the same process in reverse, one finishes with the portrait.
Pablo Picasso

I do not paint a portrait to look like the subject, rather does the person grow to look like his portrait.
Salvador Dali

So, did I work with Warhol? I worked with him less on that play then I did on other things. He actually did a portrait of my rabbit and some other stuff. Warhol was definitely... Warhol.
Harvey Fierstein

I leave you my portrait so that you will have my presence all the days and nights that I am away from you.
Frida Kahlo

The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

It is not likely that posterity will fall in love with us, but not impossible that it may respect or sympathize; so a man would rather leave behind him the portrait of his spirit than a portrait of his face.
Robert Louis Stevenson

The progression of roles you take strings together a portrait of an actor, but it's a completely random process.
Meryl Streep

I had rather see the portrait of a dog that I know, than all the allegorical paintings they can show me in the world.
Samuel Johnson

And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.
David Hockney

Every man's work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.
Samuel Butler

It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.
James Whistler

The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.
Henri Cartier-Bresson

The landscape is like being there with a powerful personality and I'm searching for just the right angles to make that portrait come across as meaningfully as possible.
Galen Rowell

It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait.
Max Beerbohm

When I paint a person, his enemies always find the portrait a good likeness.
Edvard Munch

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.
Annie Leibovitz

My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.
Helmut Newton

The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective.
Berenice Abbott

I wanted to become a cartoon artist, a portrait artist, and an illustrator. This was my first idea.
Karl Lagerfeld

We know evolution happened because innumerable bits of data from myriad fields of science conjoin to paint a rich portrait of life's pilgrimage.
Michael Shermer

To sit for one's portrait is like being present at one's own creation.
Alexander Smith

When I was little, we had a Golden Book that had all these Disney characters in one portrait on the first page. My dad used to read from it every night. We'd play this game of find Pluto or find Donald Duck. He'd read us stories and do all the voices. Those are great memories.
Danica McKellar

Even though I love my mother, I didn't want to make an idealized portrait of her. I'm fascinated more by her defects - they are funnier than her other qualities.
Pedro Almodovar

Traffic is about drugs. As detailed a portrait as I can muster about what is happening in the drug world, from top to bottom, from policy to how things move on the street.
Steven Soderbergh

Your library is your portrait.
Holbrook Jackson

The portrait I do best is of the person I know best.
Nadar

Not only are Christians writing about Jesus, but also Communists, Jews, atheists and agnostics are taking up their pens to paint a portrait of Jesus.
John Clayton

More Portrait Quotations

Portrait Translations

portrait in Danish is billede
portrait in Dutch is evenbeeld, beeltenis, portret
portrait in French is portrait
portrait in Portuguese is retrato
portrait in Spanish is retrato

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