National Portrait Gallery Scotland

We are born with a love of looking at faces. In Europe for hundreds of years, a portrait signified social importance. A portrait meant you mattered to contemporaries and to posterity. You were admired! I had come to the Portrait Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh to admire faces. But what I ended up doing was lots of reading. The two-paragraph description accompanying each oil painting was a fascinating encapsulation of the subject’s life and importance. The curators employ such succinct and trenchant English that the placards were a joy to read. We lingered over the pictures and summaries of a dizzying procession of kings, would-be kings, dukes, queens, and noble ladies. In the USA, the King is Elvis, the Duke is John Wayne, and the Princesses are Disney.

The National Portrait Gallery also displayed the top contestants of a national portrait photography contest. £15,000 was bestowed on the winner, featured below:

I do not understand about judging portrait photos. But I’m happy that such a prize exists and an artist will benefit.