Leo Self-Portraits

Andy Warhol - What an incredible sense of colour.
This picture is reproduced under the principle of fair use.

Last month, I found a huge number of artists born under a Cancer Sun. It seems that Leos are less prone to pick up a paintbrush. I think a lot of them might find being in a studio all day too lonely.

So no surprise then that possibly the most famous Leo artist of them all, Andy Warhol (6 August 1928), made sure that loads of people came to his studio, which he called The Factory, and helped him out. This is typically Leo in that it's about having a big vision and organising people.

(Now if I were looking at film directors born under Leo, I'd find loads. That's another post though.)

I've always found  the contrast between Warhol's clinical eye and beautiful colours strangely cruel and unnerving. He had a selfish but pioneeringly weird Moon-Uranus conjunction in Aries. That combined with Mercury, Moon, Venus, Neptune and Ascendant in Leo could make for someone pretty self-centred.

Joshua Reynolds, man about town.

Joshua Reynolds (27 July 1723) was another great self-promoter. Like Warhol he was a celebrity in his own right and knew anybody worth knowing in Georgian London. He painted all the notables of his day. But he was more than that, as well as being an excellent painter, he was an intellectual and a macher. He set up the Royal Academy in London which is still an important institution today.

Thomas Eakins, what a gaze!

And here's another macher and portrait painter, Thomas Eakins (25 July 1844). The master of Philadelphia not only made dozens of meticulous, profound portraits, he taught generations of American artists to look and look again. Of course his teaching career was marred by controversy, but many of his students liked him enough to help him set up a new school.

I started looking at self-portraits back in January. My idea was simply to see where that led. I've been surprised and pleased along the way to find that the portraits, as a group, do have something to tell us something about each Sun sign.

If you want a recap here are the links:
Cancer
Gemini
Taurus
Aries
Pisces
Aquarius
Capricorn