A History of Celebrity Portraits

Portraits painted by Len Mondschein are nostalgic and western paintings but portrait painting has been an important artistic genre for hundreds of years. Portraits of kings, queens, and emperors--the celebrity portraits of their day--have long been commonplace; the earliest known realistic paintings of people other than royalty date from the early 1st century AD. The Romans favored highly realistic paintings and sculptures when commissioning portraits. Realism fell out of favor from the 4th century to the late middle ages, but came to the forefront again during the Renaissance and continued until the end of the 19th century. In the early 20th century, Fauvist, expressionist, and cubist artists reinterpreted the portrait based upon their own philosophies and stylistic approaches. Finally, in the late 20th century figurative art regained its popularity and the portrait became realistic again.

Coinciding with the 19th century popularity of the painted portrait was the photographic portrait. Less expensive than paintings, photographs became the avenue through which people of any class were able to capture the likenesses of themselves and their loved ones. As it turns out, the 19th century was to foreshadow by 100 years the rise of media that would circulate the faces of 1940's and 50's Hollywood stars. In the 1840's, photographers began to produce serial publications that featured portraits of politicians, artists, and intellectuals. By the late 1850's, one could purchase or trade with friends' business-card sized images of famous people, and many consumers enjoyed the popular preoccupation with collecting them in specially-designed albums because they were great nostalgic gift ideas.

As the film industry developed and new kinds of celebrities were born, periodicals and tabloids sold portraits of (and gossip about) stars. The socializing, romances, and scandals of 1940's and 50's Hollywood stars was dissected in these publications, and the curious public could not get enough. Celebrity portraits now served to perpetuate the glamorous images that had been created on the silver screen.