Marvin Mattelson | Oil Portrait Artist
If one word describes portrait artist Marvin Mattelson, it's uncompromising. His standard for every commission is simple: make it the best painting he's ever done and give it a life of its own. Consistency is the hallmark of professionalism. Every portrait has to meet that standard.
Portrait Artistry
His commissions include the official portrait of Joseph M. Otting, the 31st Comptroller of the Currency, a portrait of Edward Cardinal Egan, eleven portraits for Velcro Industries, and a portrait of Fang Fenglei, founder and chairman of Hopu Investment Management. Fang traveled from China to sit for Marvin; the painting hangs in his Shanghai home. Marvin also paints families and individuals for private collections.
A client is trusting him with an important decision: how should this person be seen? Marvin works directly with those who commission him, learns about the sitter, and makes the choices in expression, light, pose, and composition himself. He doesn't have a standard portrait formula.
A Career in Likeness
Before concentrating on portrait commissions, Marvin painted more than twenty covers for Time, most of them portraits. On one occasion, Time and Newsweek commissioned him for covers at the same time. His cover illustrations also appeared in Scientific American, Business Week, Fortune, Life, New York Magazine, and Esquire. Nine of his original Time cover paintings are in the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, and another painting is in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The faces he painted for editorial and entertainment clients included John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, Geraldine Ferraro, Dianne Feinstein, Robin Williams, Jeff Bridges, Jeff Daniels, Philip Glass, and Louise Nevelson. The public knew these people. A likeness had to be unmistakable.
He painted movie posters for After Hours and Raising Arizona and imagery for the Rolling Stones' Rock and Roll Circus. His advertising work included IBM and BP; a painting commissioned by BP became its international logo. He created forty paintings for A&E Network. Other clients included CBS, ABC, MTV, FedEx, the National Geographic Society, the U.S. Postal Service, Putnam, Warner Publishing, DreamWorks, and Geffen Films. London agency Fallon later commissioned him for an Old Speckled Hen campaign.
The Making of a Portrait Artist
Marvin began drawing at two. His father, a sheet metal worker, held two full-time jobs so the family could buy a home. His mother was the neighborhood seamstress. Making things by hand was familiar; making a living as an artist seemed far less certain.
He drew people and cartoon characters constantly. The Pinocchio shown here dates from when he was three. Years later, he won a citywide poster contest and $250. For the first time, an art career seemed possible, and he decided to pursue it.
At art school, Marvin expected to learn how to paint. Instead, practical instruction was scarce. He was told that art should arise from intuition and that teaching technique could extinguish creativity. He left convinced he would never learn to paint! For nearly a decade, he did not pick up a paintbrush. He kept drawing, however, and built a career as an illustrator.
Marvin's drawings appeared regularly in New York Magazine. For Sesame Street Magazine, he portrayed Ernie, Bert, and Big Bird.
His Frank Zappa work included this cartoon rat for an album advertisement and an album cover. Over time, Marvin moved away from cartoons toward more representational subjects. Realistic drawing led him toward painting.
As Marvin began to paint, he came across a reproduction of a small portrait by Anthony van Dyck in a library. The head seemed to have light, dimension, and a life of its own. He could not yet explain why it affected him so deeply. “I want to know everything this guy knew,” he thought. It was his first glimpse of what a painting could do.
Stephen Murphy, then president of Angel Records, credited Marvin's cover painting with much of Chant's success. The 1994 album became a cultural phenomenon and one of the best-selling classical recordings of all time. When Marvin returned for later assignments, Murphy made a point of coming down to shake his hand and thank him.
Marvin came to see his painted illustration assignments as a chance to get paid to learn how to paint. Always looking to expand his horizons, he tried something he had never done before on each job: a color relationship, a texture, or a subject that called for a different approach. The work paid the rent, but more importantly, took him further as a painter.
Decades later, standing before van Dyck's paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, Marvin recognized in full what had seized him in that small reproduction. The painted figures seemed more alive than the living people looking at them. What had been a glimpse became a life-changing realization. A painting could possess a life beyond likeness. It transformed the way Marvin thought about painting, the way he painted, and the direction of his work. What was van Dyck's secret? Marvin set out to find out. He studied from life, learned from John Frederick Murray, a former student of Frank Reilly, and examined the choices behind the paintings he admired. That search continues to this very day.
Reproducing what he saw was only the first step. Marvin studied how van Dyck and other great painters created the illusion of life. He came to understand that decisions about light, form, color, and composition could make the difference between a convincing likeness and a figure with a presence of its own. He put those discoveries to work in his paintings.
Portrait Painting, The Inevitable Choice
That was Marvin's path to portraiture. Through his study of how great painters made their subjects feel alive, he came to see the individual as the ideal subject for putting what he had learned to work. In portraiture, he could go beyond likeness and focus on the presence, character, and individuality of the person before him—and take each painting as far as he possibly can.
He is also passionate about enlightening other artists. When his commission schedule permits, he shares what he has learned through classes and workshops for serious painters.
Marvin is a portrait artist, always striving to achieve perfection. His standard for each painting is simple: it must stand on its own as a genuine work of art and be worthy of the life it honors.