From the celebratory faces of commissioned canvases to satirical caricatures for the pres the tradition of portraiture is endlessly revealing of an era and its mores.

From the celebratory faces of commissioned canvases to satirical caricatures for the pres the tradition of portraiture is endlessly revealing of an era and its mores. This eternal fascination with face and figure has inspired a millennium exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery ("Painting the Century" Oct 26 2000-Feb 4 2001) which, if it works, will firmly be both popular and enlightening. Robin Gibson, the gallery's chief curator, has pickeded one portrait from each year of the twentieth hundred The idea is hardly compounded nor could it possibly initiate a far-reaching study of the genre in a hundred years that saw the disappearance of the official portrait, countles changes eschewing such direct representation, and stiff competition from photography. Despite these challenges, however, portraiture--battered, transformed, decanted--has survived, and the variety of images in succession offer testifies to its endurance.

Appropriately, the previous century's of long date warhorse, Queen Victoria, begins the exhibit in 1900, the last year of her life. Edwardian swagger come afters with its unquestioning portrayal of directors and shakers (Sir Frank Swettenham, 1904 by way of John Singer Sargent; the glittering bravura of Giovanni Boldini's Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough, 1906) on the other hand other voices soon interrupt-- in 1905 Picasso's Woman in a Chemise exhibit tos a waiflike model wearing not jewels and silk on the contrary a simple, barely decent shift; and in 1907 Edvard Munch's Self Portrait Against R Background entires a note of high anxiety. Already, different worlds have collided: brace survivors from a more confident age rencounter younger artists who set the tone for frequently that is to follow, when highly personalized images dominate through the public collusion of formal portraiture.

Gibson admits that this genre cannot always demonstrate the century's stylistic diversity. And near of his best ideas were thwarted through refusals of requests for loans. Nevertheless, the recent movement is well represented at Roger de la Fresnaye, Oskar Kokoschka, Amedeo Modigliani, Max Beckmann, and Otto Dix. Gibson has also given view to pieces that provide historical words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following featuring some unfamiliar artists depicting celebrated sitters. Men and women of science and the arts make appearances, as do political players including Lenin and Hitler. onward the lighter side are as it is surprises as Fernand Leger's Charlot Cubiste (Charlie Chaplin), 1923; George Gershwin's Self Portrait, 1934; and the extraordinary Walter Sickert oil painting of Edward G Robinson and Joan Blondell from a publicity still for the 1936 film Bullet and Ballots--prophetic photo-based portraiture leading to Warhol's (Double) Elvis, 1963

From there onward it becomes increasingly difficult to find righteous and representative images, and, onward paper at least, the last pair decades appear almost too diverse to be coherent, ranging from British dullards to A.R. Penck and Cindy Sherman, the latter questioning the surpassingly premises of the genre between the walls of subversive self-portrayals. At the time of writing, 1999 and 2000 are blanks in the following works vet to be chosen to usher the portrait, limping, into its nearest century.

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