Painting character

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 22nd.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: preserving the art of portrait painting.

Photography captures one second of a person’s lifetime. But a portrait artist’s job entails capturing a person’s entire lifetime.

MAST: One world-renowned artist from Russia learned the skill decades ago. He paints everyone from politicians and popes to group portraits of families.

And he’s working to keep the roots of the art form alive. WORLD’s Jenny Rough brings us the story.

JENNY ROUGH: When portrait artist Igor Babailov decided to paint George Washington he ran into a challenge.

IGOR BABAILOV: What did he look like?

Babailov uses oil on canvas to create an artistic representation of a person. And he typically insists on starting with a live session. That allows for meaningful conversations that can help reveal the person being painted. For Washington, of course, that wasn’t possible. So Babailov needed a different approach. He read books and studied other portraits, but that created another challenge.

BABAILOV: I put them all together, and I looked at them, and they all looked like portraits of different people. The hair, whatever, the face, it was like a different person.

Ultimately, Babailov decided to base his portrait on a sculpture of Washington. One done by a French artist who crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1785 to meet Washington and take a plaster mask of Washington’s face and sculpt his bust.

The works were recognized by Washington himself as his most accurate likeness, so they became Babailov’s main references.

Babailov says many portrait artists today tend to rely exclusively on photographs by simply copying them. Babailov uses plenty of photos to create a composite image. But he finds the traditional method crucial. After all, that’s what he learned growing up in the Soviet Union.

BABAILOV: Everything was done from life, 110 percent.

Babailov painted his first portrait tfour, after a buddy from daycare asked for a painting of his dad.

BABAILOV: Given that I was four, he was very happy. And he gave me a little car, a little truck. So I considered it a commissioned portrait.

At nine, he started a formal arts education. Soon, Babailov set his sights on a school unlike any in the country: the Moscow Specialized School of Fine Arts, a prestigious institute for gifted children. A dream for anyone to be accepted.

BABAILOV: Impossible by all calculations.

But then Babailov’s parents learned of a nationwide competition for one spot at the school. Part of the competition required Babailov to create a painting from his imagination in line with the theme of museums.

He submitted a painting of a church.

BABAILOV: Why? Why do you think I did church?

In his childhood, Babailov had never been to church. The Soviet-era communist regime had destroyed many of them. But the church “Joy of All Who Sorrow” survived—located near Tretyakov Gallery, an art museum.

During World War II, the museum’s valuable artworks were endangered.

BABAILOV: At some point, the leadership of the museum, they decided to, to save their masterpieces, all the paintings, they decided to use that church because of the temperature. Like wine cellars, right? It was just perfect to preserve those masterpieces and to save them.

Babailov went there with his father.

BABAILOV: It was the very first time I walked into a church. I was so taken by it, the whole thing. Cathedral ceilings, frescos, the smell of the burning wax, candles. It was just so beautiful.

So that’s what Babailov painted for the competition: the church as a museum. He earned the spot at school. He was 13. He eventually went on to study at the Russian Academy of Arts.

In 2002, Babailov migrated to the United States and became a citizen.

BABAILOV: I would say I’m privileged and honored to live in this country, one of the greatest countries on earth, if not the greatest.

It’s one of the reasons he was so passionate about painting George Washington.

For Washington, Babailov created the perspective from below, so the observer looks up at Washington’s face. Babailov did this for two reasons. One, Washington was tall. Two:

BABAILOV: To show his leadership, not to mention who he was. There’s no one like George Washington. One of the greatest men ever. One of the greatest leaders.

He also painted Washington standing, not seated, to show his energy and strong conviction.

BABAILOV: He’s standing on the background of a glorious sky. And, of course, he’s looking above our heads, looking into the future because he’s a visionary.

Look closely at Washington’s eyes, and you’ll find only a couple of eyelashes.

BABAILOV: When you’re painting an eye, you don’t have to count every single eyelash. [laughs] Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, you know?

Overall, Babailov says his mission with every portrait, whether a founding father or a banker, or a little child, is to capture a great story.

BABAILOV: A portrait is not just a visual likeness. It’s a story of the person. It’s like a biography almost. What writers do in biographies, I do in my paintings.

The portrait of Washington hangs at the Mt. Vernon Museum in Alexandria, Virginia. Meanwhile, Babailov continues to paint. He recently finished a portrait of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, to be unveiled at a future date.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Jenny Rough.

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