Portraiture, the most lucrative of artistic genres, experienced a resurgence as the newly moneyed merchant class sought to be immortalized, much like the aristocracy of the previous centuries. Key practitioners were Americans Cecilia Beaux (Mother and Son, 1896) and John Singer Sargent (Mrs. Carl Meyer and Her Children, 1895), who achieved the grand-manner likenesses their clients desired with painterly virtuosity. Intimate or less formal portrayals were often characterized by penetrating character studies, as in József Rippl-Rónai's unsettling Artist's Grandmother (1894) and Ignacio Zuloaga's The Dwarf Doña Mercedes (1899).

Henri Evenepoel, The Spaniard in Paris, 1899. Oil on canvas, 215 x 150 cm. Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent.