Exactitude is not truth, as Delacroix and other notable artists have reminded us. What, then, is “real” in painting? Current exhibitions show how three veteran painters have found their own truths in the visible world.

For four decades now, William Bailey has produced images of still lifes and figures that teeter poignantly between the idealized and the perceived. Produced entirely from memory, his paintings forsake surprises of color and texture for an intense investigation of geometries and modulated tones. On closer look, his still lifes display endless contradictions; they’re not so much group portraits of vessels as energized abstractions. Mr. Bailey guards each object’s independence, modeling it in a separate harmony of colors, and pointedly locating it with overlappings of contours and shadows. To this end he takes constant, subtle liberties, sharpening or softening shadows and simplifying planes. Compositionally, the larger still lifes tend to have the evenhandedness of Fantin-Latour rather than the adventurous oppositions of Chardin. Smaller canvases, though, are often more dynamic, their elements making demands of one another. A large articulated pitcher in “Doglio” (2007), for instance, extends and completes the vertical impulse of an earthenware vessel. The delightful “The Green Line” (2006) almost disintegrates before our eyes in terms of spatial logic, and yet its lively hues counterbalance each other rhythmically, conveying the dramatic chasm between a pitcher’s spout and a gray-green vase.

The installation also includes several of the artist’s paintings of figures in interiors. The artist’s classicizing approach makes the seated woman in “Room by the Sea” (2007) feel slightly anonymous — deliberated so delicately as to practically merge with the surrounding air. The descending illumination in “L’Attesa” (2006), however, movingly characterizes a woman at a window. Her face is deeply shadowed, so that the painting becomes a portrait of sunlit hands, curling over a windowsill in delicious turns of light and shade.

Since the 1970s, William Beckman has been best known for meticulously detailed, full-length portraits. Posed frontally and often nude, his figures wear expressions — almost always of impassive self-possession — that perfectly reflect his technique.

Most of the artist’s 10 paintings at Forum are self-portraits. Masterfully modeled in front of empty backgrounds, the subjects stare matter-of-factly at the viewer, their soft flesh and clothing contrasting tellingly with the hard glints of eyeglasses. While the artist’s technique never changes in the portraits, the illumination varies subtly and specifically from open shadow to glancing light. One very large canvas from a recent series of double portraits features the artist standing next to a sport motorcycle. A far smaller painting, however, stands out for its accessibility of expression. “Deidra” (2003), a likeness of the artist’s daughter, betrays a trace of vulnerability, while indications of farmland beyond provide spacious relief.

Mr. Beckman is no photo-realist, and indeed his dense hues demonstrate the utterly different capabilities of color in painting and photography. At the same time, he seems to take photography’s factual, evenly weighed detail as a paradigm of truthful rendering. His single-minded modeling — unmoved by the tension of a supporting neck, or the sudden emergence of an ear — deprives his images of the passion and, arguably, the individual truthfulness of the Northern Renaissance artists to whom his work has a technical resemblance.

Intriguingly, an 8-foot-wide landscape in the exhibition has just this quality. The fanning angles of tilled fields race into the distance, while a lone, dense bush regards the overarching expanse of sky. It contains an ingredient quite absent in the portraits: exhilaration.

Over the decades, Daniel Greene has received many honors for his commissioned oil and pastel portraits. Since 1990, he has turned to other subjects, including subway stations and carnival games. His nearly 20 undated paintings and pastels at Gallery Henoch pursue these themes with brilliant, if conservative, energy.

His large easel-size paintings depict figures before exotic backgrounds: wall-to-wall tiers of teddy bears, or giant game boards. The most striking images draw on his virtuosity as a portraitist. “Ticket Taker” provocatively frames a disembodied face within the bright, sealed space of a ticket booth, while “Christie’s — Milton Avery” portrays six highly individualized faces before a bare wall. Like Norman Rockwell, Mr. Greene’s considerable gift for storytelling arises from descriptive allusions rather than from pictorial momentum. His paintings consequently seem more illustrational than those of Eakins or especially Courbet, who characterize their subjects with rhythmical weightings of color and gesture.

The simpler images of blossoms before antique game boards are more compelling. Here, the gestures of delicate, voluminous petals contrast tellingly with the flattened background patterns. Most startling of all is “Wall Street,” which features a tiled subway wall complete with ornately tessellated lettering. In one area, the deep azure of the tiles turns a brilliant, cool white in the glare of an unseen bulb. With a few finely adjusted colors, Mr. Greene beautifully captures the transformation of light in this peculiar fragment of the world.

Bailey until November 24 (541 W. 25th St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 212-242-2772); Beckman until November 24 (745 Fifth Ave., between 57th and 58th streets, 212-355-4545),

Greene until November 3 (555 W. 25th St., between Tenth and Eleventh avenues, 917-305-0003).