Artists painted self-portraits long before the word existed

Evidence

Art historian Hannah Williams writes that since, “according to the OED, ‘self-portrait’ did not appear in the English language until 1831—and in France, autoportrait did not make it into the Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française until 1928,” artists such as Gustave Courbet and Sir Joshua Reynolds were never “painting a ‘self-portrait’ (or ‘autoportrait’), per se.” All “per ses” aside, this isn’t true. Language does not dictate technique. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 64

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to the Corpocene project: the naming of ‘influencer’ and ‘corporate personhood’ may similarly impose categories onto prior practices rather than describing genuinely new forms.