Definition of Portrait

Portraiture is one of the artistic ideas that I am concentrating on, and a portrait could be a painting, photograph, sculpture or other representation of a person. (That was what I define portrait.) There are two definition of portrait in Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary at http://Oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com that I am showing you in the following:

portrait noun ˈpɔːtreɪt ; ˈpɔːtrət ; ˈpɔːrtrət

1 a painting, drawing or photograph of a person, especially of the head and shouldersHe had his portrait painted in uniform.a full-length portraita portrait paintersee also self-portrait

2 a detailed description of somebody/something

synonym depictiona portrait of life at the French court

That was how I define portrait/portraiture, but after I saw the work from few artists who work on different type of portrait, including landscape and animals, made me re-think about what constitutes the portrait, and I believed that there is a huge boundary to consider what portrait actually is. 

Omaha Beach, D-Day 1944 by Robert Capa

The Steerage 1907 by Alfred Stieglitz

Fils / Père: Nathan, 9 ans & Ulric, 32 ans by Ulric Collette

These portraits are quite different from each other. Which one will you be considered as a portrait? Sometimes an object or a landscape could also be in a portrait, like a portrait of landscape. What do you think?

Welcome to Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries. Word of the Day. Available athttp://Oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com (Accessed: 3 December 2014).