'Portrait Tales offers a compelling series of behind-the-scenes stories about both well-known and little-known masterly portraits from world art history and, therefore, about the famous or unduly forgotten or neglected artists who painted them. Jean Fremon enables us to look both behind and, not least, into the 'magic mirrors', as he phrases it in his French title, with which artists paint their own self-portraits. To tell his tales, he uses a colourful palette of phenomena related to how portraits are made and to how people pose for them; he highlights not only the painterly but also the psychological, sociological and political backgrounds informing the artist and the model.' (John Taylor, from the preface)

Translated by: John Taylor