The power in turning away - portraits of the female profile

 

Eugénie Ritter, by Benjamin-Constant, 1903. 

Une femme de chez nous au cheveux crépus (A local woman with curly hair), by Takou D’Assié, circa 2020.

Portrait of a Lady in Red, Florentine School, circa 1460-70.

Portrait of Woman Turned, by Coolidge Ozaki, circa 1942-45.

The Orchid, by Fujishima Takeji, 1926.

Woman or goddess, nicknamed “La Parisienne”, from the western wing of the palace at Knossos, circa 1350 BCE.

Portrait of a Woman in Profile, Turned to the Left, by William Sommer, 1890.

Study of the Head of a Young Woman in Profile, by Matthijs Maris, 1855.

Medallion, double portrait of the artist and her lover Nesta Obermer, also called the "YouWe" painting, by Gluck, 1936.

Profile Portrait of a Lady, American School, circa 1835-40.

Tomb wall depicting Queen Nefertari, consort of Rameses II, circa 1298-1235 BCE.

Portrait Study in Profile, by Marion L. Pooke, circa 1911.

Head in Profile, by Emil Nolde, 1919.

Profilo di donna, by Charles Lefèbvre, nineteenth century.

Profile Portrait of a Woman to the Left, unknown pastellist, circa 1800-20.

Supposed posthumous portrait of Cleopatra VII of Egypt, from Herculaneum, circa first century AD.

Profile of an Italian Woman by Mary Cassatt, 1873.

Portrait of a Young Woman, by Sofonisba Anguissola, circa 1580s.

A Young Woman, by Friedrich von Amerling, 1834.

Noia Tangerina (Girl from Tangiers), by Josep Tapiró i Baró, circa 1900-10.

Portrait of a Young Girl, by Philip Wilson Steer, 1932.

Classical Head in Profile, by William Hoare, circa second half of the eighteenth century.

Profil de femme au chignon (Profile of a woman with a chignon), by Pablo Picasso, 1904.

Nanna, Profile to Right, by Anselm Feuerbach, 1864.

Profile of a Blonde Woman on a Blue Background, by Francis Picabia, circa 1941-1942.

Portrait of Lady Vivien, by Konstantin Makovsky, 1900.

Portrait of a Lady in Profile, by Carel Fabritius, 1654.

Head of a Woman Seen in Profile, by Bartolomeo Passarotti, circa second half of the sixteenth century.

Profile of a Woman, by Fujishima Takeji, 1926-27.

Profile of a Young Woman, by Giovanni Boldini, circa 1880s (?).

Portrait of a Young Woman in Profile with a Mask in her Right Hand, by Giambattista Piazzetta, circa 1720-30.

Porträtt av Ung Kvinna i profil (Portrait of young woman in profile), by Emilie Mundt, circa 1880s.

Profile Portrait of a Young Lady, by Piero del Pollaiuolo, circa 1465.

Young Girl in Profile, by Alexei Alexeevich Harlamoff, circa 1880s.

Blackfoot Woman, by Joseph Henry Sharp, 1905.

Profile of a woman, India, Delhi, circa first half of the nineteenth century.

Rembrandt’s Mother, by Jan Lievens, circa 1629.

Bathsheba, by Philip Wilson Steer, circa 1919-21.

Profile of a Nubian Girl, by Franz Xavier Kosler, before 1905.

Anselm Feuerbach - self-portraits

1873.

Anselm Feuerbach (12 September 1829, Speyer – 4 January 1880, Venice), German painter, one of the leading German classicist artists of the nineteenth century.  The son of a well-known archaeologist, from 1845 and 1848 he attended the Düsseldorf Academy, and later at the Munich Academy.  But in 1850, along with other dissatisfied students of the Academy, he went to study in Antwerp.  The next year he moved to Paris, where he was a pupil of Thomas Couture until 1854.

Circa 1840s.

1847.

That same year, under the patronage of the Grand Duke of Baden, he visited Venice, where he was very influenced by the work of the great Venetian masters.  He then moved on to Florence and Rome; but for brief trips home, he was to remain in Rome for almost twenty years.  In 1873, Feuerbach was appointed professor of History painting at the Vienna Academy, but after only a few years, he resigned his post and went to live in Venice.  He died there a few years later at the age of fifty.

1852.

1852.

1853.

1854.

1854.

1857.

1871.

1875.

1878.

1878.

***

Circa 1860s.

And in case one wonders if the artist might have given himself, in all his many self-portraits, a not entirely earned glamor, or a shade more physical beauty than in reality he possessed, it appears he really was that dashing and quite good-looking.