Before the advent of the camera, portraits were created to have an historic record of a person or event. A portrait is usually a pictorial representation of an individual. In the hands of a gifted artist it becomes a means to convey something about the person through objects and ideas. At ARTinaClick.com we feature many important portrait artists. Rembrandt was one of the first artist's to capture the inner essence of the sitter. It is in these psychological profiles, particularly his self-portraits, that we begin to understand the artist. Primitive portraits give us a glimpse of life in the early 19th Century. Although we do not know who painted the portraits there is often a record of the date and the sitters. Unlike the traditional portraiture of the day these folk art paintings are of ordinary people. The compositions, most often of children, include favorite objects, costumes of the day and detailed backgrounds. When the camera was invented to record the likeness of an individual, artists sought to use portraiture as a vehicle for expression. French painter Henri Matisse's portraits of his wife are experiments in Fauve. Pablo Picasso's cubist inventions had experiments in portraiture as well. In Girl Before a Mirror, Seated Woman and The Dream we understand the flattening of cubist space as all of the facial features are visible simultaneously. Perhaps one of the best known portrait is Van Gogh Self-Portrait with Bandaged ear. In this painting and in the portait of his friend the postman Roulin, Van Gogh achieves the ultimate goal of portraiture, to teach us about the artist and the sitter and most importantly about ourselves. Today our fascination with celebrities has made images of Elvis, Marilyn and The Beatles icons of popular culture.