According to art historical tradition, “painterly painters” are those whose work exhibits a gestural, often loose, facture that makes the viewer conscious of its painted quality through visible brushwork, inchoate, haptic, blotches and sometimes, heavy impasto. Portraits, like painterly painting, are thought to be largely concerned with fixing or situating individuality, particularity, figuration v. abstraction, and even identity construction, subjectivity, and self-awareness. Together this range of concerns will structure a selective study of the portrait painters (who should be) best known for their virtuosic coloring and painterliness including, but not limited to: Titian, Rubens, Van Dyck, Velázquez, Ribera, Reynolds, Carriera, Boucher, Goya, Manet, Sargent, Bacon, Guston, Rauschenberg, Whitten, Lewis, Basquiat, Saville, Richter, Simpson, Odutola, etc. Race, gender, nationalism, and close looking anchor our exploration.