Portrait of the Doyles

Jack Beal (1931-2013) was an American painter known for his Realist figure paintings that maintained the figurative tradition during the period of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. Portrait of the Doyles from 1970 is a double portrait in the Realist manner that Beal developed as an alternative to the abstraction that dominated American painting in the 1960s. The 1970 date places this in the period when Beal was producing the figure paintings that established him as a leader of the new Realism that emerged in American painting in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Portrait of the Doyles is important in the history of American Realist painting because it demonstrates the return to figurative painting that emerged as an alternative to Abstract Expressionism in the late 1960s. Beal's double portrait shows that figurative painting could still produce works of artistic quality at a time when abstraction dominated the American art world, and his Realist manner served as an alternative model for younger painters who were looking for a way to return to figurative painting.

Portrait of the Doyles is Beal's Realist alternative to abstraction: a double portrait in the figurative manner that he developed as an alternative to the Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism that dominated American painting in the 1960s. The 1970 painting helped establish the new Realism that would rejuvenate American figurative painting.