What is a portrait?

It might be hard to believe but both of the above paintings are depictions of the same woman - Pablo Picasso’s wife Olga. Painted 12 years apart, it might seem extraordinary that the same artist could produce such different images of the same person. Picasso’s development of an abstractionist form of art called cubism was hailed as a major breakthrough by some and the painting of Olga to the right is an example of the cubist approach. Should it be considered a portrait?

The question “What is a portrait?” was a centrally important feature of the Supreme court case over the award of the Archibald Prize to William Dobell in 1944 and Picasso figured significantly at times during the trial. Garfield Barwick, the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs, argued that Dobell’s painting of Joshua Smith did not meet the accepted definition of a portrait and therefore should have been excluded from the judging of the prize that year.

Barwick claimed that the term “portrait” was narrowly-defined at the time J.F. Archibald’s will came into effect in 1919 and Dobell’s depiction of Smith was a “caricature” rather than a portrait. Caricature was considered by most to be a different category of art to portraiture because it presented an unbalanced perspective on the subject.

Those who defended Dobell claimed that he had painted a portrait that showed the character of its subject in a deeper and more sophisticated way than the mostly bland portraits entered in the Archibald year on year. For them it was a masterpiece and represented what true portraiture really was.

Barwick drew on the example of Picasso’s cubist work during the court case in an attempt to demonstrate that without a narrow definition of portraiture there was a danger that a painting of virtually anything could be submitted to the Archibald and be called a portrait.

On a number of occasions during the trial Barwick referred to a painting supposedly done by Picasso called “Portrait of my father”. The painting depicted some packing cases on a wharf and was meant to be a sarcastic comment by Picasso on his father’s absence from his life. There is no evidence that Picasso ever executed such a painting but Barwick argued that if there was not a clear and narrow definition of portraiture then such a painting could be admitted to the Archibald and even win it. How could this happen if there was not even an attempt to depict the human form in such a painting?

In his questioning of witnesses Barwick also used a hypothetical example of a painting of a coil of barbed wire as a portrait of his mother-in-law to demonstrate such a possibility. Essentially Barwick was trying to argue that there was a clear point at which a painting stopped functioning as a portrait and started to become something else. On this analysis, William Dobell’s portrait of Joshua Smith went too far in exaggerating Smith’s features and overall appearance and did not meet what Barwick and many others believed should be the relatively stringent definition of a portrait.

It’s worth revisiting the question, then, “What is a portrait?” Should there be a clear and quite narrow definition of the term or is it only appropriate to define the term portrait quite broadly?