Girlie Pix! The Grønmark Blog team pick their favouries

If Portrait of a Girl in Pink by William Rothenstein (1872–1945) isn't quite what...

...the headline led you to expect, I apologise - but "Portraits of Women" (the title of one of my numerous Pinterest boards) sounded a bit dull. A problem for a male heterosexual when judging the portrait of a female is, I've found, trying to separate the attractiveness of the sitter from the effectiveness of the painting as a painting (or drawing).

Portrait of Eva Katherine Balfour (1911), John Singer Sargent 

For instance, is Sargent's sketch of Eva Katherine Balfour (later Lady Buxton) arresting because Miss Balfour is strikingly beautiful - or because it's superbly executed? Bit of both, I suspect. I find the only way I can distinguish between art and posh girlie pix is by whether the sitter comes across as a real, live human being - an actual person with wants, doubts, joys and miseries - or as an aesthetically pleasing object with no independent existence outside the frame containing her portrait. For me, the girl in pink and Miss Balfour are real: there's lots going on behind the eyes - they're thinking (probably "Oh, do get on with it!"). Renoir's delightfully pretty, snub-nosed cuties are sometimes objects:

And sometimes subjects, with their own independent reality:

Or am I just imagining there's a difference between the two? John Singer Sargent alternated between the subject/object modes - depending, presumably, on how he responded to the sitter - whereas the Paris-based Italian painter, Giovanni Boldini, who produced an endless series of stylish, elegant portraits, always seems much more interested in aesthetic effects than character:

Whatever, here is a varied selection of portraits of real, live women, starting with Jeunesse Dorée 1934 by Gerard Leslie Brockhurst (the model was Kathleen Woodward, whom the artist married in 1947):

Corporal Elspeth Henderson and Sergeant Helen Turner, 1941, Laura Knight:

Portrait of a young girl with a prayer book ca.1549, Bronzino:

Black Girl, 1879, Ilia Efimovich Repin:

Jossa 1886, Christian Krogh:

Self-portrait (1921), Zinaida Serebriakova:

Portrait of Mrs. Letitia Ann Sage 1785, Unknown artist:

Portrait of the Artist's Wife Marie 1889, Peder Severin Kroyer

Pauline in the Yellow Dress, c.1944, Herbert James Gunn:

Laura 1506, Giorgione:

My Wife (Karin in the Studio), by Carl Larsson:

Portrait of Frances Abington as Miss Prue in Congreve's 'Love for Love' 1777, Joshua Reynolds

Geraldine Lee, No. 2 1914,  George Wesley Bellows

 Louise Jopling 1879, John Everett Millais:

I'll end with John Singer Sargent in full character mode, with Lady Agnew of Lochnaw 1892

As with so many of the women in these portraits, I get the feeling that Lady Agnew is staring right back at us (and, at least in my case, is none too impressed).