Read about The Metropolitan Museum of Art's ongoing exhibition "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible" on view The Met Breuer through Sept 4. Excerpt from our latest blog post: "Rembrandt is said to have stated “A work is complete if in it the master’s intentions have been realized.” And Matisse claimed that a work of his is finished “when it represents my emotion very precisely and when I feel that there is nothing more to be added.” George Romney sent his self-portrait as a gift to his friend William Hayley “as is.” Alice Neel signed her portrait of James Hunter on the back, declaring it finished. In these two cases at least, the artists recognized that the portrait was finished in terms of their artistic aims, whether or not its technique was perfectly finished in the academic sense. And this is the key to why so many of the portraits in the preceding galleries seem to me to be “finished.” They have achieved the artistic object of portraiture—to capture the sitter in some essential way...