A Closer Look: Faces Alexander Sturgis

Formerly published as "Pocket Guides: Faces", this popular title is published as a new edition, "A Closer Look: Faces". The fresh, modern design allows more images and a reader-friendly format. Faces are everywhere in the National Gallery's collection: in portraits and narrative scenes, in allegories and paintings of everyday life. It is often the faces that communicate most directly in a picture, their expressions may reveal the drama of a story, or the character of a sitter in a portrait. How faces are captured shows in striking ways the artistic aims of those who painted them. But how can the depiction of a face suggest a personality, and how have artists distinguished the features of martyrs and sinners, peasants and poets? How do we read facial expressions and how subjective is this? "A Closer Look: Faces" tackles these questions, and introduces such issues as the ideals of beauty and how portrait painters have captured a likeness and convey character. This guide lets readers approach faces - in all galleries - with a fresh perspective, and appreciate the skill that has been brought to their portrayal.

Alexander Sturgis is Director of the Holburne Museum of Art in Bath. He was Exhibitions Curator at the National Gallery, London. His publications include Telling Time (2000) and Rebels and Martyrs: The Image of the Artist in the Nineteenth Century (2006).