Object of the Day: Portrait of a Lieutenant

This painting by British artist Eve Ruth Garnett is a portrait of a young Lieutenant who was killed in the First World War. Dated 1917, the painting was clearly larger at one point in its life--possibly even a full-length portrait. When and why it was cut down are unknown, however, its current frame seems to date to the 1920's. Miss Garnett was a member of the Royal Academy and shows a sensitive hand in her work. Always a favorite of mine, the portrait hangs in my dining room. There's something about his eyes and slight smile that seems familiar and avuncular. I have a weakness for portraiture. Again, I think my fondness for this genre speaks to a sense of permanence as well as the illusion of life. The sense of the monumental is very appealing. Long before the era of camera phones in everyone's pockets, portraiture captured not just the expression of one split-second, but an impression of a person. In this painting there is more of this soldier than can be found in any photograph. Here, we get a sense of life, of his soul. His expression is not frozen in pixels, but seems to change and breathe. Yes, a photo is more accurate. However, the true measure of a life is not accuracy. A life is a series of moments, not just one. A portrait is the perfect monument--the marriage of a person's spirit and the artist's hand.