Portraits that conveyed mood and atmosphere

When I think about atmosphere and mood, I think Francis Bacon - one of my favourite portrait artists. Though his subjects are very disturbing I really like the way he applies paint, often with soft circular but expressive brush strokes. He distorts the faces while maintaining likeness as we can see in his self-portrait study, where even though the face is distorted you can still recognise his signature hair style and some of his features like his eyebrows and mouth.

Another artist who creates mood and atmosphere with colour and energetic curved brush strokes is Edvard Munch, an example of which is his Nude 1913 where he uses colours in the same spectrum, reds, pinks, purples and oranges, complemented by the blue rag on the right hand side in this dramatic and disturbing composition.