Gerhard Richter portraits are ripe with emotion

Still, it is delightful, even exhilarating, in its own modest way. The visitor wanders through four rooms of black and white paintings of blurry anonymous snapshots and newspaper photos, punctuated by colour portraits in the corridor, before reaching a bright, heart-warming explosion of colour in pictures of Richter’s wives and children in the final room. Ultimately it confirms that Richter’s portraits — as emotional as they are precise — are up there with the most important series of modern paintings, from Monet’s Haystacks to Warhol’s Car Crashes.

The German artist emerged from the pop art and abstraction of the 1950s to pioneer conceptual painting. He worked in series which were either icily abstract — he invented colour chart painting, later revived by Hirst in his spots — or obsessively realistic. The portraits belong to the latter category. Richter used photographs from newspapers and magazines, or anonymous snapshots or images of family and friends, to create an original body of work that was not so much portraits but paintings about portraiture.

He used his brush to celebrate the faults of bad photography — the out-of-focus, the distortions at the edge of frame, the blur of movement, the damaged surface. At the same time these paintings bragged loudly about their skill — the flowing horizontal brushwork of Richter’s mature 1960s style is breathtaking in its discipline and subtlety.

By the Seventies, he was working in colour, producing a number of witty "multiple-exposure" portraits of Gilbert and George. These paintings grip you with their contradictions — the painted snapshots of female figures have obvious echoes of Renaissance paintings of the Virgin and Child or Saints — and you will feel your brain short circuit as you try to work out in which way the paintings are like photos, and in which ways they aren’t.

The story of Richter’s development is well told, but the show also has room for a handful of curiosities. Among them is a small but stunning self-portrait. Richter looks down, his face erased of all detail. But on this occasion, the artist is capturing the look of a decayed old painting, not a photograph. The oil paint is thick and dark, as if seen through layers of ageing varnish. Around the edges, the artist has meticulously painted white scuff marks, where the paint has been worn away.

The only bum note is sounded by one of Richter’s mirrors, which is literally that — an intellectually tiresome invitation to the visitors to contemplate themselves as a portrait. Perhaps it would have worked better if its surface had the faded patina of antique lead mirrors, to echo his paintings, but it hasn’t.

And yet, this exhibition also demonstrates that one of Richter’s greatest achievements is what he didn’t succeed in doing. He famously said he wanted to paint portraits which "must not express anything of the sitter’s soul, essence or character", yet in this sense his pictures are complete failures. From the delicate smiles and playful gestures of two women on a beach in Renate and Mariane (1964) to the shy self-consciousness of his daughter Ella (2007), these are paintings ripe with eye-watering — nay, tear-jerking — emotion. Highly sensitive art lovers should bring a hanky.

Until 31 May. Daily 10am-8pm (until 10pm Thursday and Friday). Admission £8, concs available. Information: 020 7306 0055; www.npg.org.uk

Gerhard Richter: Portraits
National Portrait Gallery
St Martin's Place, WC2H 0HE