Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Matthew C. Perry

Matthew C. Perry edit

Original - Japanese woodblock print of Matthew C. Perry, c.1854.

Reason: Great historic value and an interesting outsider's perspective on a notable American. According to the Peabody Essex Museum (discussing a near-identical version of the print owned by that museum), "This type of woodblock print of Perry would have circulated among the curious residents of Edo, since only a handful of people would have actually seen the commodore and his crew. The characters located across the top read from right to left, “A North American Figure” and “Portrait of Perry.” The artist, perhaps rendering a Westerner for the first time, exaggerated Perry’s features—the oblong face, down-turned eyes, bushy brown eyebrows, and large nose."[1] The colors are admittedly somewhat washed out, but this is the best scan I could find and I think the historical value outweighs the technical flaws.
Articles this image appears in: Matthew C. Perry
Creator: Artist unknown

Support as nominator Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:32, 22 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose For a historical piece, I would think we could get a better resolution. It is barely a 1000 pixels across, seems to be rendered for web pages as opposed to for printing. Sam Barsoom 05:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Weak oppose The idea behind this nomination is spectacular. The file could be higher resolution and have better color balance, but really it's the organization that doesn't work for me. Half the fun would be seeing how an American uniform looked to a Japanese artist of the mid-nineteenth century - is this really the original framing or was it cropped? Too much space gets devoted to the writing above his head, which pushes the subject rather low - how often does a head and shoulder portrait place the subject's eyes in the lower half of the image? Highly encyclopedic, but tons of useful encyclopedic images with a certain twist aren't featured material. Reluctantly opposing. Durova^Charge! 01:06, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
- This in fact was the original framing, judging by several similar versions here. That link also has a few images of naval people in uniform, but they're very low res and I don't think as interesting, assuming we could get a better version. The link also suggests that this was the standard format for Japanese portraits of the era - every other headshot (even for other individuals) is cropped like this. Calliopejen1 (talk) 01:27, 24 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Important historical image. Spikebrennan (talk) 20:15, 27 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Support per nom. Angelono2008 (talk) 14:15, 28 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Not a good illustration of the individual, and quality is average. I don't know enough to say whether it's a good example of this sort of art, but it's not used to illustrate those articles anyway. --jjron (talk) 08:13, 29 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Not promoted MER-C 10:35, 30 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]