The pet portrait painter working in isolation and developing a uniquely personal manner is a comparatively new concept.
Until the close of the 18th century successful painters ran businesses in which methods of production, quality control and sales to customers were often very highly organised. In medieval times and during the Renaissance these were conducted in places that were literally workshops, usually rooms on the ground floor of a building that could be opened onto the street by means of shutter doors, thus acting as both a shop and a studio. Paintings were carried out in these workshops on a commercial level, tantamount to a modern trade or profession. oAlthough there was obviously allowance for originality, it remained within certain cnfines, with the emphasis on craftsmanship and mastery of the materials.
Workshops such as these were run by masters who, if attainted success, took on assistants and apprentices. Everything relevant to the production of paintings, from extracting pigments to laying a varnish, would form part of the workshops activities, and this body of accumulated knowledge would be passed on from master to pupil. As the painters’ studios developed, each new generation carried with them not only their own experience but also that gained from all their predecessors.
By the 16th century the more successful studios, like those of Titian and Raphael, must have been painting factories. They created great quantities of work, sometimes on a large scale, a major part of which would be done by assistants. Large studios continued into the next century with painters like Rubens’ and Van Dyck, but at some stage during the 17th century the system began to break down. There was a pronounced fall in technical excellence, as methods became sloppy.
By the 18th century painting was still considered a trade, but as painters lost the knowledge of technique in favour of creativity, the recognition of personal genius became something that all painters aspired to. Intellectualising artistic production in this way offered a socially acceptable path to greater status for the painters.
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