Portraits

Hans Holbein the Younger was a German and Swiss artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He is best known as one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He also produced religious art, satire and Reformation propaganda, and made a significant contribution to the history of book design.He brought the style of portrait to the United Kingdom.

Sir Joshua Reynolds was an English painter, specializing in portraits. John Russell said he was one of the major European painters of the 18th Century. He promoted the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was a founder and first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, and was knighted by George III in 1769.

Qi Baishi was a Chinese painter, noted for the whimsical, often playful style of his watercolor works.

The subjects of his paintings include almost everything, commonly animals, scenery, figures, toys, vegetables, and so on. He theorized that "paintings must be something between likeness and unlikeness, much like today's vulgarians, but not like to cheat popular people". In his later years, many of his works depict mice, shrimp or birds.

Zhang Daqian was one of the best-known and most prodigious Chinese artists of the twentieth century. Originally known as a guohua painter, by the 1960s he was also renowned as a modern impressionist and expressionist painter. In addition, he is regarded as one of the most gifted master forgers of the twentieth century.