The sculputure's name, Userpic, denotes, "a connection between a profile picture and a renaissance portrait of a wealthy city dweller, who hired an artist to make his portrait to represent himself to the society, i.e. a specific userpic to present oneself to the world," Chernyshev told Designboom.
The portrait, said to represent Jeanne Hébuterne, the artist's companion, sold for $30 million, the second-highest price ever paid at auction for a Modigliani.
Monkman said he was trying not to make a sentimentalised portrait, but to represent the changes that occur as children grow into teenagers and the problems that develop in families.
Amit Roy‑Chowdhury of the University of California at Riverside said that a comparison of the faces in a range of portraits thought to represent Anne has identified only one, the Nidd Hall portrait, as being the same as the face printed on the Moost Happi medal.
The levade, the lifted front legs, was characteristic of royal equestrian portraits, designed to represent the sovereign mastering the great mount with a single hand on the reins.
The portraits seemed to represent the legacy of slavery and injustice that plagued black life in America and especially the Deep South.
Or perhaps it is a signal of how portraiture has changed since the earliest days of American art; perhaps today "American Portraits" do not need to represent identifiable humans, or to be made by "Americans".
Many portraits of Nero were reworked to represent other figures; according to Eric R. Varner, over fifty such images survive.
The Gallery is now able to represent Tony Blair with a portrait consonant with the personality of an individual who has considerably shaped the political, economic and cultural climate of Britain".
The "Park Portraits" also represent a return of sorts to the "Beach Portraits," in which Ms. Dijkstra photographed gawky adolescents pulled away from friends or family or cavorting in the water to pose for her in their swimsuits.
The flora in the portrait represent the stations of Obama's scattered personal and ancestral past — blue lilies for Kenya; jasmine for Hawaii; chrysanthemums for Chicago — and their momentary intrusions might hint at the ways in which the man was somewhat shrouded by the dazzling story that delivered him into his nation's arms.
