Portraits Painting Appearances

Gerhard Richter Portraits: Painting Appearances is the catalogue for curator Paul Moorhouse's 2009 survey of Richter's portrait paintings, staged at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Published by National Portrait Gallery Publications in association with Yale University Press to accompany the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 26 February to 31 May 2009, the 175-page book is organized in chapters including "The Picture of Reality," "The Most Perfect Picture," "Devotional Pictures," "Continual Uncertainty," and "Private Images, Personal Portraits."

Richter has painted portraits since the early 1960s, moving from likenesses of dealers, collectors, and artists in his circle to the 1971-72 series Forty-eight Portraits, based on found photographs of composers and writers such as Gustav Mahler and Franz Kafka, and two paintings of his daughter Betty, made in 1977 and 1988. Moorhouse's study surveys this strand of Richter's work, which runs alongside his better-known photo-based and abstract painting.