Portraits of Family

Durer (attrib), "The Artist's Father at 70,"oil on panel, 1497

Painters have always made images of their family members. We have examples of family portraits and family likenesses dating to at least the time of Albrecht Durer and certainly examples abound from before that. Many painters resorted to family members for sitters as a convenience, no others being available, perhaps. Some, like Lucian Freud, painted numerous family members.

Hoff, "Portrait of Kerry," digital

In my own case, family portraits have been an interesting part of my work. Over the years I've made portraits of family as gifts, as experiments, as personal studies, and sometimes as memories. A few weeks ago one of my brothers died suddenly, and during the first days afterward my initial instinct was to produce a drawing--a digitalium made on an iPad--based part in memory and part in a couple of reference photos. He was nearly seventy, usually in good humor and smiling, with a little gleam in his eye. This portrait is a memorial, and as such idealizes the subject somewhat because I wanted to show his general good humor and slightly cynical take on the world. This drawing, done only a few days after my brother's passing, may serve as fuel for an oil portrait. Time will tell. 

Hoff, "Portrait of Bill," oil on canvas.

Other portraits of my family date to several years ago, and all were done in oil paint using standard methods. In almost all cases, these images show family members and were gifted. One of my favorites is this portrait of my mother's husband, from about a decade ago. This oil on canvas was a gift to my mother and Bill not long after their late-life marriage. It is a relatively large work at 20x16, the largest portrait of this format in my portfolio.

Hoff, "Portrait of C.B." oil on panel.

A number of years earlier came this posthumous portrait of my sister, based on a high-school graduation photograph. Like the portrait of Bill, this one was a gift to her widower, and dates to more than a decade ago.

Neither of these would be acceptable as commissioned portraits, and instead represent either my personal vision of the individual or were done as mementos of a remembered life. Although artists of the past did family members from life sittings (certainly they did so before the mid-19th century), none of mine was done from life but instead from reference materials. Perhaps life sittings ought to be next.