Intruding

Portraits can make us feel we are intruding on a very private scene. This is precisely their appeal, says Philip Hensher

These effects of intrusion and privacy are achieved without the most characteristic and troubling device of western art, the sitter's gaze. When we look now at a portrait that uses the direct gaze, such as the Raphael Bindo Altoviti or Allan Ramsay's portrait of his second wife, we feel that the painting has created a hero, or heroine; we have someone saying: "This is who I am," with their direct and unreadable expression. But the painting seems to begin a dialogue: the sitter is looking outwards, at someone else. We often feel that there was, originally, a specific object of this gaze. But we feel, too, that the painting is saying "you" to a crowd of anonymous, shadowy people: people like us, evanescent, and slipping for a moment into unseeing inspection.

- This is an edited extract from the catalogue for the BP Portrait Award 2005