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The portraying of an individual can surely be attributed to the most difficult and most interesting tasks in art. A portrait is an art work whose nature is hidden in the depiction of the individual, which for some viewers can convincingly sound in different voices, but for others may be invisible and inaudible. Any artist wishes to paint a portrait. Some of them remain devoted to it the whole lifetime, for others it is only interest that lasts "a moment". The development of a portrait is not a steady one. Achievements are followed by periods when portrait is almost unknown. By reviving together with every new epoch in mankind's culture a portrait has proved its vitality. Being loyal to man, aspiring to express the meaning of the existence of an individual and mankind, reflecting the deepest relationships between the different and the general, a portrait testifies to the place of a human in the world (Kachalova, 1995). Today, when such a great diversity of materials and technologies is available, for a painted portrait there remains quite an insignificant place. Conducting research in the Daugavpils Museum of Local History and Art, the following aim was set: on the basis of the collection of painted portraits kept in the museum holdings, to study plots, styles, forms and compositions employed by the artists. The Daugavpils Museum of Local History and Art holds more than 20 painted portraits created in Latvia in the 50th - 90th of the 20th century. The holdings have five children portraits pained by I. Dobrāja, self-portraits of K. Dobrājs, V. Mežbārde, L. Procenko a.o., and portraits painted by P. Glaudāns, M. Bērziņa, A. Āboliņa, J.Svenčs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]