"Portraiture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... returned to the plain farce in Os Almocreves, the Auto da Feira and O Clerigo da Beira (which, however, ends with a series of Court references) with all his old wealth of satire, touches of comedy and vivid portraiture. He also returned to the pastoral play in the Serra da Estrella, while his exquisite lyrism flowers afresh in the Triunfo do Inverno, a tragicomedy which is really a medley of farces. It is not a great drama but it is a typical Vicentian ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... of the king, in these scenes, are drawn very closely after Davila, as the reader will easily see, from the Italian original subjoined in the notes. That picturesque historian had indeed anticipated almost all that even a poet could do, in conveying a portraiture, equally minute and striking, of the stormy period which he had undertaken to describe; and, had his powers of description been inferior, it is probable, that Dryden, hampered as he was, by restraints of prudence and delicacy, would not have chosen to go far beyond ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... glow of innocent pride as the familiar features of Mr. Gladstone emerge from the bust of Clytie. An accidental stroke of the thumbnail develops new marvels of expression. (By the bye, it's just as well to forbid deliberate attempts at portraiture.) And I know no more becoming expression for everyone than the look of intent and pleasing effort—a divine touch almost—that comes over the common man modelling. For my own part, I feel a being infinitely my own superior when I get my fingers upon the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... pernicious invention of fire, to pervert their flesh into food, luxury, disease, and premature death, were let loose upon the world. Such is clearly the correct interpretation of the fable of Prometheus, which is the symbolical portraiture of that disastrous epoch, when man first applied fire to culinary purposes, and thereby surrendered his liver to the vulture of disease. From that period the stature of mankind has been in a state of gradual diminution, and I have not the least doubt that it will continue ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... was horribly ugly; but I am not quite sure that I should have noticed it, if I had not known his story. He spoke not a word, and met nobody's eye, but kept staring upward into the smoky vacancy towards the ceiling, where, it might be, he beheld a continual portraiture of his victim's horror-stricken agonies. I rather fancy, however, that his moral sense was yet too torpid to trouble him with such remorseful visions, and that, for his own part, he might have had very agreeable reminiscences of the soldier's death, if other eyes had not been bent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring, With such consort as they keep Entice the dewy-feather'd Sleep. And let some strange mysterious dream Wave at his wings in aery stream Of lively portraiture display'd, Softly on my eyelids laid: And, as I wake, sweet music breathe Above, about, or underneath, Sent by some spirit to mortals good, Or the unseen Genius of the wood. But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... of self-portraiture, is not to be accepted too literally. So taken, it confounds, I think, coldness and harshness with a very different quality, a want of quick and versatile sympathy, and 'thickness of skin' with the pride ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... draws back at the last moment. He goes to a cavern, and conjures up the prince of hell. "Arnaud knew himself to be interrogated. What he required.... What was that answer the effects explain.... There passed in liveliest portraiture the various men distinguished for that beauty and grace which Arnaud so much desired, that he was ambitious to purchase them with his soul. He felt that it was his part to chuse whom he would resemble, yet he remained unresolved, though the spectator of an hundred shades of renown, among ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Interviews continued. Generals, judges, merchants, capitalists—the whole trying tribe of "prominent citizens"—were asked what they thought of such an attack on the fair fame of the city by one of its own sons. Less prominent citizens sent in their views unasked. Professors of crayon portraiture wrote to tell the Doctor he knew nothing of art. Lecturers to classes in civics advised him that he little realized the citizen's duty to his native town. The Noonday Worm, which had more than once praised the Doctor's public spirit, now turned on him ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... Testament or to the rise and constitution of Christianity. Whether we accept the canonical Hebrew books as a revelation or simply as part of an ancient literature, makes no difference to the fact that we find there the strongly characterised portraiture of a people educated from an earlier or later period to a sense of separateness unique in its intensity, a people taught by many concurrent influences to identify faithfulness to its national traditions with the highest social ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... eyebrows, a penetrating glance, and rather abrupt manners be thought to justify comparisons with the devil or a hyaena, the art of historical portraiture will assuredly have to be learnt over again in conformity with impressionist methods. That Lowe was a gentleman is affirmed by Mrs. Smith (nee Grant), who, in later years, when prejudiced against him by O'Meara's slanders, met him at Colombo without ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Washington was written in 1760 by his companion-in-arms and friend George Mercer, who attempted a "portraiture" in the following words: "He may be described as being as straight as an Indian, measuring six feet two inches in his stockings, and weighing 175 pounds when he took his seat in the House of Burgesses in 1759. His frame is padded with well-developed muscles, indicating ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... of parting from those we love is the central motive of Greek funeral art. It is repeated in every possible form, and each mute marble stone seems to murmur [Greek]. Roman art is different. It introduces vigorous and realistic portraiture and deals with pure family life far more frequently than Greek art does. They are very ugly, those stern-looking Roman men and women whose portraits are exhibited on their tombs, but they seem to have been loved and respected by ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... by Arthur Johnson (Harper & Brothers). With the publication of this volume, Mr. Johnson at last takes his rightful place among the best of the American short story writers who wish to continue the tradition of Henry James. In subtlety of portraiture he is the equal of Edith Wharton, and he excels her in ease and in his ability to subdue his substance to the environment in which it is set. He surpasses Mrs. Gerould by reason of the variety of his subject matter, and as a stylist he is equal ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... with tragedy; tragedy is concerned with great passions and heroic follies consecrated by ancient errors in fable and history. Electra belongs to the Spaniards, to the English, and to ourselves as much as to the Greeks; but comedy is the living portraiture of a nation's absurdities, and unless you know the nation through and through, it is not for you to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... not so oval, nor were his eyes so big, nor his lips so full, nor his hands so delicate, as they appeared in the mezzotint. Yet (bating the conventions of eighteenth-century portraiture) the likeness was a good one. Humphrey Greddon was not less well-knit and graceful than the painter had made him, and, hard though the lines of the face were, there was about him a certain air of high romance that could not be explained away by the fact that he was of a period ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... perhaps would hardly have accepted, it is further defined as being to show "the very age and body of the time his form and pressure". Yet it must be remembered that Sidney is loud in praise of so unflinching a portraiture of life, base and noble, as Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida. And on the whole it remains true that the limitations of Sidney are the limitations of his age, while his generosity is ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... this respect Shakspere stood apart from his rivals, with their merely literary training. And in point of fact, we do find in his plays, year by year, a strengthening sense of the realities of human nature, despite their frequently idealistic method of portraiture, the verbalism and factitiousness of much of their wit, and their conventionality of plot. Above all things, the man who drew so many fancifully delightful types of womanhood must have been intensely appreciative of ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... Edgar A. Poe, differs in some important degree, however, from that which has been generally conveyed in the notices of his death. Let us, before telling what we personally know of him, copy a graphic and highly finished portraiture, from the pen of Dr. Rufus W. Griswold, which appeared in a recent number of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... adaptation of the dialogue to the various characters, therefore, offers scope for good acting, and gets it. Mr. Farren, in Sir Paladin Scruple, affords what tradition and social history assure us is a perfect portraiture of an old gentleman of the last century;—more than that, of a singular, peculiar old gentleman. And yet this excellent artist, in portraying the peculiarities of the individual, still preserves the general features of the class. The part itself is the most difficult ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 27, 1841 • Various
... the lost arts is that of portraiture. Raised by Titian and his contemporaries to the position of one of the noblest walks of Art, and in the generations following depressed to the position of minister to vanity and foolish pride, it has remained, during the most of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... "Portraiture of characters and events should take the form of one gentleman conversing with another, in the easy tone of good society. The author who sets out to address a crowd defeats his own object; he eliminates the ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... of the purely romantic drama, in which the interest is not historical, or dependent upon fidelity of portraiture, or the natural connexion of events,—but is a birth of the imagination, and rests only on the coaptation and union of the elements granted to, or assumed by, the poet. It is a species of drama which owes no allegiance to time or space, and in which, therefore, errors of chronology ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... the eye to remark or the pen to express the individual; or who perhaps were only blinded and silenced by generous admiration, such as I partly envy for myself—such as you, if your soul were enlightened, would envy on your bended knees. It is the least defect of such a method of portraiture that it makes the path easy for the devil's advocate, and leaves for the misuse of the slanderer a considerable field of truth. For the truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy. The world, in your ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and variety of materials for portraiture, it may easily be conceived how two professed delineators of his character, the one over partial and the other malicious, might,—the former, by selecting only the fairer, and the latter only the darker, features,—produce two portraits ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... and to the close examination of the nebulae. In the delineation of the form of these latter objects Herschel found ample employment for his skilful pencil. Many of the drawings he has made of the celestial wonders in the southern sky are admirable examples of celestial portraiture. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... wood-pulp mills, told in this book, is entirely a work of imagination. But as I have had to draw very largely on my knowledge of the wood-pulp trade of Eastern Canada, and the conditions under which it is carried on, I desire it to be clearly understood that this story contains no portraiture of any person or persons, living or dead, and contains no representation of any business organisation connected ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... both the opening and the closing scene of this Reading, in six chapters, from "David Copperfield." In its varied portraiture of character and in the wonderful descriptive power marking its conclusion, it was one of the most interesting and impressive of the whole series in its delivery. Through it, we renewed our acquaintance more vividly than ever with handsome, curry-headed, reckless, heartless Steerforth! With ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... good, Ensal, but it needs a supplement. Charles Sumner's oratory and Mrs. Stowe's affecting portraiture of poor old Uncle Tom were not sufficient of themselves to move the nation. There had to be a John Brown and a Harper's Ferry. Preserve that paper and send it forth. The blood of Earl Bluefield and his ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... the bison on the other. He is particularly interested in personalities, having done a number of very clever portrait busts. It is enough to look at the portrait bust of Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney's boy to realize what he is able to do in the line of portraiture. He has produced nothing finer in that line. He is a ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James
... one sees her 'Mother and Daughter,' which gained the gold medal at Pittsburg in 1899 and the gold medal also at last year's Paris Exposition, the less one feels inclined to accept it as a satisfactory example of portraiture. Magnificent assurance of method it certainly has, controlled also by a fine sobriety of feeling, so that no part of the ensemble impinges upon the due importance of the other parts; it is a balanced, dignified ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... too great a subject for such humble portraiture as I can attempt, and she will henceforth appear in these pages only as occasion requires. It is time that we ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... girl seemed to see that face as though it had a more direct presentment before her eyes than this faded portraiture of words penned by ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... maximus, Publius Scipio, and many other worthy men of our citie were woont to say, when they beheld the images and portraitures of their ancestors, that they were most vehemently inflamed vnto vertue. Not that the sayd wax or portraiture had any such force at all in it selfe, but that by the remembring of their woorthy actes, that flame was kindled in their noble breasts, and could neuer be quenched, vntill such time as their owne valure had equalled the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... a book entitled Eikon Basilike, the Portraiture of his sacred majesty King Charles the first in his solitudes and sufferings. ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... books filled wholly with character-drawing; but they have not been great novels. The great novel deals with human action as well as with mental portraiture and analysis. That "character in itself is plot" is true only in a limited sense. A plan, a motive with a logical conclusion, is as necessary to a novel or a romance as it is to a drama. A group of skillfully made-up men and women lounging in the green-room ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... valuable just to the extent of its literary value, of the success with which the discrepant masses have been fused and cast into the shape the insight of the writer has determined. The writing of great history is entirely analogous to fine portraiture, in which fact is indeed material, but material ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... improving. By a judicious choice and detail of their particular actions, it sets before our eyes a living image of those heroes who have been the object of the admiration of past ages; it exhibits to us a portraiture of their interior virtues and spirit, and gives the most useful and enlarged view of human nature. From the wise maxims, experience, and even mistakes of great men, we learn the most refined lessons of prudence, and are ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... and east, and south, and north, A light as of four sunsets, blazing forth A gold-green zenith 'bove the Sea-God's head. Of lucid depth the floor, and far outspread As breezeless lake, on which the slim canoe Of feather'd Indian darts about, as through The delicatest air: air verily, But for the portraiture of clouds and sky: This palace floor breath-air,—but for the amaze 890 Of deep-seen wonders motionless,—and blaze Of the dome pomp, reflected in extremes, Globing a ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... Portraiture would seem to be more in esteem than ever. Everywhere along the walls are to be seen nothing but statesmen, poets and women of the world, whose identity is indicated in the official catalogue by initials only, but whom everybody recognizes at a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... do not think the objection is a natural conservatism, or dislike of doing something to which one is unaccustomed. The ill omen does not appear to have been feared for the young as well as for the old, even in provincial localities, when for the first time portraiture by daguerreotypy or more recently by photography was introduced. It has long been known that among primitive peoples there is a decided prejudice against portraiture. The notion seems to be that the individual may lose his vigor, if not his life, by allowing a ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... with Montaigne, the desire of self-portraiture is, below all more superficial tendencies, the real motive in writing at all—a desire closely connected with that intimacy, that modern subjectivity, which may be called the Montaignesque element in literature. What he designs is to give you himself, to acquaint ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... other peculiarity of La Huguerye to which I shall allude is his studied misrepresentation of the character of Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre. Contrary to the uniform portraiture given by contemporaries of both religious parties, she here appears as "an inconsiderate woman (femme legere), with little forethought," "known to be jealous of the authority of the admiral," "whom she thwarted by her authority as much as was possible, at whatever cost or danger ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... This vivid portraiture of a scene, which the writer is pleased to consider grand, does not appear to have much relation to the history of the Genus Bos: it however, exhibits the brutal and ferocious habits of two varieties of Genus Homo, namely Nobility and Mobility—two ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey
... The following was the portraiture of Brousson, issued to the spies and police: "Brousson is of middle stature, and rather spare, aged forty to forty-two, nose large, complexion dark, hair ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... have been considering this eminent person as yet only in his public capacity, as a benefactor of mankind by his fertile genius and indomitable perseverance; and the best portraiture of his intellectual character was to be found in the description of his attainments. It is, however, proper to survey him also in private life. He was unexceptionable in all its relations; and as his activity ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... something withheld her from disclaiming such empty employments. Indeed, she was presently much interested in the admirable portraiture of "Silas Marner," and still more by the keen, vivid enjoyment, critical, droll, and moralizing, displayed by a man who heard works of fiction so rarely that they were always fresh to him, and who looked on them as studies of life. His hands ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... meeting of the Mechanics' Institute, Professor J. J. Mapes being present, a question was asked if any one present could give information relative to portraiture from life by the Daguerreotype. Mr. Kells, a friend of Mr. Wolcott and a scientific and practical man (since deceased), at once marked out upon the black-board, the whole as contrived by Mr. Wolcott. This gave publicity to the invention of Mr. Wolcott. Shortly after, Professor Mapes, Dr. ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... (1811-1863) are preeminent. Both are humorists; in Dickens especially, humor runs into broad caricature. Both present pictures of society and of common life. They illustrate the tendency of the novel at present to rely for its attraction upon scenes and incidents of ordinary life, and the minute portraiture of manners and of character. Dickens owes his popularity largely to the unique sort of drollery and the genuine pathos that are mingled in his pages. Thackeray is a satirist, with a keen eye to detect the weaknesses of humanity, but with a deep ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... the canvas held by Stone, answered quickly: "Neither of these, and it is more than probable that the other two are also copies by the same hand. Wonderfully well done, too, but the study of portraiture is a hobby of mine; I have even contemplated a monograph on the subject, or, more particularly, a hand-book to the smaller galleries and private collections. But I doubt if I ever do it now," ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... portraiture in these landscapes in verse; some have charm and delicacy, but, for the most part, they are only catalogues of the external world, wholly lacking in links with ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... which had been for some time spreading, under his auspices, through the leading personages of the Opposition. Like most men who have made themselves familiar with the works of a great writer, I had formed a portraiture of him by anticipation. I never was more disappointed. Instead of the expressive countenance and commanding figure, I saw a form of the middle size, and of a homely appearance, a heavy physiognomy, and the whole finished by ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... going to say, my dear boy, is an extraordinary woman. It was from her originally that the Pilgrim first learnt to call the female the practical animal. He studies us all, you know. The Pilgrim's Scrip is the abstract portraiture of his surrounding relatives. Well, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Margaret, thou seest our manner of life faring Rhineward. I with the two arts I had least prized or counted on for bread was welcome everywhere; too poor now to fear robbers, yet able to keep both master and man on the road. For at night I often made a portraiture of the innkeeper or his dame, and so went richer from an inn; the which it is the lot of few. But my master despised this even way of life. 'I love ups and downs,' said he. And certes he lacked them not. One day he would gather more than I in three; another, to hear his tale, it had rained kicks ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... I shall not treat. This book of sketches shows Asch at his very best. For the form—one without plot dealing with character and nature description—is decidedly fitted to the elemental, passion-laden flow of his style. It is a great wonder to me that these gems of artistic word portraiture have not yet been translated into English. In my opinion they rank equal in worth with the similar work of Daudet, Maupassant, Tchekoff ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... by one or another of her predecessors. As a painter of manners, of all that belongs to the surface of life, she is rivaled in fidelity, if not in breadth and force, by Fielding, Thackeray and Miss Austen. Her observation is less keen than theirs, her portraiture less vivid, her humor less cordial and abundant. Her conceptions have not the intensity of Charlotte Bronte's, nor her great scenes the dramatic fire of Scott's. In the minor matters of invention and plot she sometimes has recourse to shifts that betray the deficiencies they are intended to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... that there would be the best opportunity of comparing the local birds with those of Britain generally and of the whole world, while a real notion of the life of birds would be conveyed by the full portraiture of those forms with which the local visitors would be most familiar, making them distinct items of knowledge in a manner scarcely ever attempted, and, in fact, almost impossible with the usual methods ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... of far more value than all the imaginary sketches of impossible dukes and good and wicked baronets in which so many English novels abound. Several of M. Zola's personages seem to me extremely lifelike—Gavard, indeed, is a chef-d'oeuvre of portraiture: I have known many men like him; and no one who lived in Paris under the Empire can deny the accuracy with which the author has delineated his hero Florent, the dreamy and hapless revolutionary caught ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... from the doctrine and devotions of the Catholic Church and was inextricably bound up with Christian life. The graceful Gothic cathedrals, pointing their roofs and airy spires in heavenly aspiration, the fantastic and mysterious carvings of wood or stone, the imaginative portraiture of saintly heroes and heroines as well as of the sublime story of the fall and redemption of the human race, the richly stained glass, and the spiritual organ music—all betokened the supreme thought of medieval Christianity. But humanism recalled ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... a correct census of the Florida Seminole by name, sex, age, gens, and place of living. I have endeavored to present a faithful portraiture of their appearance and personal characteristics, and have enlarged upon their manners and customs, as individuals and as a society, as much as the material at my command will allow; but under the disadvantageous circumstances to which allusion has ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... George III. It was not therefore published until 1848, when they were edited by Mr. Croker. They are referred to both by Horace Walpole, who had heard of them, if he had not seen them, and by Lord Hailes, as affording the most intimate portraiture of a court that has ever been presented to the English people. Such a delineation as Lord Hervey has left ought to cause a sentiment of thankfulness in every British heart for not being exposed to such influences, to such ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... they made a bust or statue, they did not hesitate to idealize that face; but the Romans labored to make an exact likeness of the man, leaving him in his statue as nothing more than he looked to be. This manner of portraiture often does great injustice to its model, for the changing expressions which come with emotions and with conversation often illuminate the plainest faces with a rare beauty; therefore the aim of portraiture should be to give the ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement
... adventures, where we lose sight of all that identified it. A complete transformation destroys the likeness which was begun. There is an intentional dislocation of the parts of the story, when they might make it imprudently close in its reflection of facts or resemblance in portraiture. A feature is shown, a manifest allusion made, and then the poet starts off in other directions, to confuse and perplex all attempts at interpretation, which might be too particular and too certain. This was no doubt merely according to the fashion of the time, and the habits of mind into which ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... character, for in Scotland, strange to say—that is, to Englishmen it will appear strange—the people believe themselves to be remarkable for want of foresight—'aye wise ahint the hand,' is their own self-portraiture—and for a certain ardour of genius which leads them into all sorts of scrapes. The issue is, after all, a hard one, and viewing the long services of Mr Jerdan to the literary republic, we would hope that a cheerful life-evening is still in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... engravings. The walls were adorned with old-fashioned lithographs, principally portraits of country gentlemen with high collars and riding gloves: this suggested—and it was encouraging—that the tradition of portraiture was held in esteem. There was the customary novel of Mr. Le Fanu, for the bedside; the ideal reading in a country house for the hours after midnight. Oliver Lyon could scarcely forbear beginning it while ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... There were always small groups before it, for it created something like the uproar that Manet's "Olympia" had raised in its time. Peter learned from one critic that his technique was magnificent, his picture a masterpiece of psychology and of portraiture, and that if he kept on he'd soon be one of the Immortals. He learned from another that while he undoubtedly had technique, his posing was commonplace, his subject banal, his imagination hopelessly bourgeois; that he was a painter of the ugly ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... fear that you are one of those who are unjust to our old Tennyson's Duke of Wellington. I have just been talking it over with Symonds; and we agreed that whether for its metrical effects, for its brief, plain, stirring words of portraiture, as - he 'that never lost an English gun,' or - the soldier salute; or for the heroic apostrophe to Nelson; that ode has never been surpassed in any tongue or time. Grant me the Duke, O Weg! I suppose you must not put in yours about the warship; you will ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... every incident of their lives, were steeped in the supernatural. Could even Titian's 'Ariosto' that I loved beyond other portraits, have its grave look, as if waiting for some perfect final event, if the painters, before Titian, had not learned portraiture, while painting into the corner of compositions, full of saints and Madonnas, their kneeling patrons? At seventeen years old I was already an old-fashioned brass cannon full of shot, and nothing kept me from going off but a doubt as to my ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... the veteran journalist, upon whom the honored sobriquet of "Father of Base Ball" rests so happily and well, appears in portraiture, and so well preserved in his physical manhood that his sixty-three years rest lightly upon his well timed life. Since the age of thirteen he has resided in Brooklyn, New York, and is an honored member of the distinguished society of old Brooklynites. He entered upon ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... many curious particulars relating to the life of that unfortunate Prince, which are no where else to be found. In delineating the character of Charles, he seems dispassionate and impartial, and indeed it agrees perfectly with the general portraiture of him, as it is drawn by our ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... constructed incidents. Besides which, the most powerful elements of emotional: interest in Tragedy Peripeteia or Reversal of the Situation, and Recognition scenes—are parts of the plot. A further proof is, that novices in the art attain to finish: of diction and precision of portraiture before they can construct the plot. It is the same with almost all the ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... nature, as the sole ground and efficient cause not only of all things, events, and appearances, but likewise of all our thoughts, sensations, impulses, and actions. Obedience to nature is the only virtue." It is possible that Byron traced his own lineaments in this too life-like portraiture, and at the same time conceived the possibility of a new Don Juan, "made up" after his own likeness. His extreme resentment at Coleridge's just, though unwise and uncalled-for, attack on Maturin stands in need of some explanation. See letter to Murray, September ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... Himself, oh! how they were lightened! They saw what they never saw! They could not have thought that such rarities could have been couched in so few and such ordinary words. Yea, they did gather that the things themselves were a kind of portraiture, and that, too, of Emmanuel Himself. This, they would say, this is the Lamb! this is the Sacrifice! this is the Rock! this is the Door! and this is the Way! with a great many other things. At Gaius's supper-table ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... first development of art in America and it led to the working of metals, followed by drawing and portraiture. Among the Americans, as soon as that term ceased to mean Indians, art took a most distracting turn. Europe was old in pictures, great and beautiful, when America was worshipping at the shrine of the chromo; but the chromo served a good turn, bad as it ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... more surprised to find Schlegel describing the Maid of Orlean of Henry VI. as more historical than the portraiture of Schiller. There is the same amount of fable in both. In Henry VI., we have an echo of the coarse superstition and vulgar scandal of the English camp—in Schiller, the fable is beautiful, and assists to develop a character ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... Italian painters. When he and his brother began to paint, Venetian art had already taken its distinctive character for open-air effects, rich scenic details in architecture, furniture and dress (said to be conspicuous in commercial communities), and a growing tendency to portraiture. Gian went with the tide, but he guided it to noble results. His simplicity and good sense, with his purity and dignity of mind, were always present. He introduced into his pictures 'singing boys, dancing cherubs, glittering thrones, and dewy flowers,' ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... product of the novel lay in the provincial tale. The new methods easily lent themselves to the portraiture of local conditions, types and colour. Every part of the country had its writers who recorded its traits in this way. For New England Mrs Harriet Beecher Stowe described the older life in Old Town Folks (1869), ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... more definite ways in which I can help, let me know, and I will do my best. You will want, I should think, a physical and a philological committee to organise schemes: (1) for systematic measuring, weighing, and portraiture, with observation and recording of all physical characters; and (2) for uniform registering of sounds by Roman letters and collection of vocabularies and grammatical forms ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... this portraiture of my accomplishments that I was nearly six feet high, with more than a common share of activity and strength for my years, and no inconsiderable portion of good looks, I have finished my sketch, and ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... WILLIAM ANDERSON of Loanhead, which has since been published under the title of "the Voice of Renwick," and extensively circulated. It contains a condensed, yet lucid sketch of the life, labours and sufferings of Renwick, a faithful portraiture of his character, and an able exposition and defence of the great principles of the testimony of the Scottish martyrs. There has been published in modern times no juster or more appropriate tribute to the character, principles, and ...
— The Life of James Renwick • Thomas Houston
... Chopin's opinion of Mdlle. Sontag coincides on the whole with those of other contemporaries; nevertheless, his account contributes some details which add a page to her biography, and a few touches to her portraiture. It is to be regretted that the arrival of Titus Woyciechowski in Warsaw put for a time an end to Chopin's correspondence with him, otherwise we should, no doubt, have got some more information about Mdlle. Sontag and ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Ajanta and elsewhere is now fully recognized. A great revival of pictorial art took place about A.D. 1570 in the reign of Akbar. From that date the Indo-Persian and Indian schools of painting maintained a high standard of excellence, especially in portraiture, for a century approximately. During the eighteenth century marked deterioration may be observed. See A History of Fine Art in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of privilege; a pious pilgrim, or exhausted giant. Sitting in his closet at Beconsfield, he pictured the downcast eyes and dishevelled hair; the limbs loaded with fetters, and the hands help up in remediless supplication. He grew enamoured of his portraiture, and without waiting a moment to enquire whether it in the slightest degree resembled the reality, he volunteered the championship of Irish popery. His son was commissioned to represent him in this disastrous connexion. But Richard, once on the spot, was instantly and completely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... of movement, fulness and richness of reality, exuberance of invention, excellent portraiture, dramatic vehemence, and an almost unrivalled sympathy with the swift and passionate world of angels. What he lacked was power of composition, simplicity of total effect, harmony in colouring, control over his own luxuriance, the sense of tranquillity. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... one the company, too, turned in the direction Triboulet was looking. In portraiture the classical buffoon grinned and gibed at them from the tapestry; and even from his high station above the clouds Jupiter, who had ejected the offending fool of the gods, looked less stern and implacable. An expectant hush fell upon the assemblage, when suddenly Jove and Momus ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... There, I think a person ought not to have anything up his sleeve. It undermines confidence. But my dissatisfaction with the quoted passage is not on account of noumenon; it is on account of the misuse of the word "silenced." You cannot silence portraiture with a noumenon; if portraiture should make a noise, a way could be found to silence it, but even then it could not be done with a noumenon. Not even with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... an elevation and a classic polish in these volumes, and a felicity of grouping and of portraiture, which invest the subject with the attractions of a living and stirring episode in the grand ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... and might well console me for all the abuse it has called forth, both on him and me. I trusted to the substantial goodness and greatness of the character, and thought I should only make it more effective in portraiture by keeping in the few specks. I despise with my heels the whole trickery of erecting an alabaster image, and calling that a Man.... The work is now done, and I leave it to its fate. I had no personal object ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... be a true description of Virtue which makes it all-sufficient to itself, that alone a just portraiture of its excellence which does not lessen its internal power by exaggerating its outward advantages, nor degrade its nobility by dwelling only on its rewards. The grandest moral of ancient lore has ever seemed to me that which the picture of Prometheus affords; ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... questioned, and the glow of the narrative springs legitimately from the romance of the theme. Irving understood, what our later historians have fully appreciated, the advantage of vivid individual portraiture in historical narrative. His conception of the character and mission of Columbus is largely outlined, but firmly and most carefully executed, and is one of the noblest in literature. I cannot think it idealized, though it required a poetic sensibility to enter into sympathy with ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... I have met with has more than ever impressed the truth of my principles on my judgement. I am young, I am ardent in the cause of philanthropy and truth; do not suppose that this is vanity; I am not conscious that it influences this portraiture. I imagine myself dispassionately describing the state of my mind. I am young; you have gone before me—I doubt not, are a veteran to me in the years of persecution. Is it strange that, defying prejudice as I have done; I should outstep the limits of custom's prescription, ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... is leading me from what I have set myself to describe, namely, portraiture in marble. For this magnificent work thus perpetuates the last of the Montmorencys and his wife as they were when separated for ever in their prime. Imposing although the monument is as a whole, these two figures in white ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... rise before us from Tolstoi's pages. His art is rather that of a painter or musical composer than of a sculptor. He has more colour, a deeper perspective, a greater variety of lights and shadows—a more complete portraiture of the spiritual man. Tolstoi's people stand so living and concrete that one feels one can recognise them in the street. Turgenev's are like people whose intimate confessions and private correspondence, unveiling all the secrets of ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... instantly arrested public attention and curiosity, even in an age eminently fertile in great works of fiction. With little of plot—for it pursued the desultory ramblings of military life through various climes—it possessed a wonderful truth and reality, great skill in the observation and portraiture of original character, and a peculiar charm of style, blending freshness and vivacity of movement with classic delicacy and grace. The work soon became naturally and justly popular, having reached ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... session, and too often grow old and destitute while unsuccessfully prosecuting before Congress a claim which is just, but in some respects irregular. These ruined suitors, threadbare and slipshod, begging or borrowing their daily bread, recall Charles Dickens' portraiture of the Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce Chancery suite, which had become so complicated that no one alive knew what it meant. The French spoilation claims that were being vigorously prosecuted in 1827 are yet undetermined in 1886. None of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... writer. The works that render his name so familiar are his Anabasis, a simple yet thrilling narrative of the Expedition of the Ten Thousand Greeks; and his Memorabilia, or Recollections of Socrates. This work by his devoted pupil is the most faithful portraiture that ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... nervous haste the leaves were turned. The town clock struck three. As she finished the book and laid it on the table she bowed her head upon her hands. She was bewildered. Was Kingsley his own Raphael-Aben-Ezra? or did he heartily believe in the Christianity of which he had given so hideous a portraiture? Her brain whirled, yet there was a great dissatisfaction. She could not contentedly go back to the Laura with Philammon; "Hypatia" was not sufficiently explicit. She was dissatisfied; there was ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... an amazing faculty of describing the things he designed. That is saying he had the mind's eye to see his conceptions precisely as they would appear in finished state. So in talking his subjects always seemed before him for portraiture. One can readily perceive the capacity he must have had for making the unreal appear real to a listener, and also how he could lead Lael, her hand in his, through a house more princely than anything of the kind in Constantinople, and on board a ship such as never sailed unless on a ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... retain no solid and express portraiture of true right and germane justice; we have only the shadow and image of it." —Cicero, ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... to the world bearing on the cover of its first number a vignette of the portraiture of the ever honored and revered John Winthrop, first Governor of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. The effigies expressed a countenance, features, and a tone of character in beautiful harmony with all that we know of the man, all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... time were crude. For the most part they consisted of copies of illustrations which I had cut from magazines that had miraculously found their way into the violent ward. The heads of men and women interested me most, for I had decided to take up portraiture. At first I was content to draw in black and white, but I soon procured some colors and from that time on devoted my attention ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... and it may be mentioned without circumlocution that the young lady ushered in by the vulgar American reporter, whom he didn't like and who had already come too often to his studio to pick up "glimpses" (the painter wondered how in the world he had picked HER up), this charming candidate for portraiture rose on the spot before Charles Waterlow as a precious model. She made, it may further be declared, quite the same impression on the gentleman who was with him and who never took his eyes off her while ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... Drawing.—Good work in portraiture depends on good drawing, just as other work does. Don't think that because it is only a head you can make it more easily than anything else. As in other kinds of work, the drawing you should try for is the drawing of the proportions and characteristic lines. Get the ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... cried the editor, scratching the tip of his nose, where he had somehow caught a spot of ink. "Bald facts; honest portraiture. It doesn't ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... about his works) truly observes, that few writers have discovered so much variety and inventiveness as Addison, who, in the papers of a single week, sometimes traverses the whole gamut of literature, supplying keen sarcasm, rich portraiture of character, the epistle, the tale, the allegory, the apologue, the moral essay, and the religious meditation,—all first-rate in quality, and all suggesting the idea that his resources are boundless, and that the half has not ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... But such portraiture as the above is apt to get very vague and insipid unless one is able to convey a vivid picture of the man as he walked, and spoke, and lived. The sic sedebat in Trinity College (Cambridge) chapel has given more people a thrill at the thought of Bacon than ever gained one ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... was the effect, then, of his science upon Duerer's ideal of beauty, and skill in portraiture. What effect had it on the temper and quantity of his work, as compared with poor ignorant Holbein's! You have only three portraits, by Duerer, of the great men of his time, and those bad ones; while he ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... his furrows; and his wakefulness is to give his heifers their fodder. So is every artificer and workmaster, that passeth his time by night as by day; they that cut gravings of signets, and his diligence is to make great variety; he will set his heart to preserve likeness in his portraiture, and will be wakeful to finish his work. So is the smith sitting by the anvil, and considering the unwrought iron; the vapour of the fire will waste his flesh, and in the heat of the furnace will he wrestle with his work; ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various
... Christ Church idealizes in form and color the spirit of this noble woman, without attempting portraiture. A real likeness of Miss Cooper, as she appeared in her ripest years, would recall a sweet face framed in dangling curls, a manner somewhat prim, but always gentle and placid, a figure slight and spare, with a bonnet and Paisley shawl that are all but essential to the resemblance. She would best ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Melville portrait of Mary, young and charming, and wearing jewels which are found recorded in her Inventories, has hitherto been overlooked. An admirable photogravure is given in Mr. J. J. Foster's "True Portraiture of Mary, Queen of Scots" (1905), and I understand that a photograph was done in 1866 for the South ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... otherwise in some tribes used by the priest and his aids for exhibiting the tribal hero's deeds, it long remained subservient to religion, either for the coloring of statues (as it does still in Roman Catholic images of saints, etc.), or for the decoration of temples, or for the portraiture of deceased persons on sarcophagi and stelae; and when it gained independence it was long employed almost wholly for the rendering of sacred scenes,—its eventual secularization being accompanied by its subdivision ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... the duty of every painter at present, who has not much invention, is to take subjects of which the portraiture will be precious in after times; views of our abbeys and cathedrals; distant views of cities, if possible chosen from some spot in itself notable by association; perfect studies of the battle-fields of Europe, of all houses of celebrated men, and places ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... of whom were foreigners, one would naturally expect such a portraiture of slavery as persons unaccustomed to the institution would give. Most Americans, of course, considered the institution as belonging to the natural order of things and, therefore, hardly ever referred ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... usual disadvantages of choosing a leading character that is off the lines of heroic portraiture is that the author may seem to be in sympathy with a base part in life and with base opinions. In this novel I run a different risk. I shall not be surprised if I provoke some hostility in making the bad man justify his course by the gaunt and grim morality that masquerades ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... empire. With the rich accumulation of ages, the Romans were familiar. They knew nothing indeed of the solitary grandeur of the Jewish muse, or the mythological myths of the Ante-Homeric songsters; but they possessed the Iliad and the Odyssey, with their wonderful truthfulness, and clear portraiture of character, their absence of all affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their good sense and healthful sentiments, yet so original that the germ of almost every character which has since figured in epic poetry can be found in them. We ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... the full enjoyment of holiday, scrambling for vantage points on the sloping ground, if such were handy, or a good spot for their camp-stools. In view of the uncertainty as to the actual site of the original performances, this portraiture is "atmospheric" rather than "photographic." (See Saunders in TAPA. XLIV, 1913). At any rate, we have ample evidence of the turbulence of the early Roman audience. (Ter. Prol. Hec. 39-42, and citations immediately following). Note the description of Mommsen:[46] "The audience was anything ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... latitudes to the Mediterranean, from the mouths of the Rhine to the Euxine, there was no other exhibition of free deliberative eloquence in any popular assembly. And the Luise of Voss alone, a metrical idyl not less valued for its truth of portraiture than our own Vicar of Wakefield, will show, that the most sequestered clergyman of a rural parish did not think his breakfast equipage complete without the latest report from the great senate that sat in London. Hence we need not be astonished ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... has a deep and healthy and honorable respect for fame—not of the cheap and tawdry, lionizing kind, but fame in an everlasting appreciation of those who think with their own minds. Almost any pen portraiture could but skim the surface of a nature so gifted and with which daily association is so delightful—an association which is a constant fillip to the mind in fascinating witticisms, in deft characterizations of men and things, and in deep drafts on memory's storehouse ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... for comparisons, or rather contrasts? With as much of Washington's domestic portraiture before us as these letters hold up, shall we turn to look at others? There is no difficulty, but in selecting from ...
— Washington in Domestic Life • Richard Rush
... personality. It is not so here. The man lives again. There is a short description of Johnson's person—it is not in the Life, but in the Tour to the Hebrides, the very next book upon the shelf, which is typical of his vivid portraiture. May I take it down, and read you a paragraph ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... befitting the portrait of an Emperor. The bust of the young Augustus in the Vatican for depth of expression, individuality, truth to nature, and delicacy of finish and treatment, is a marvel in portraiture. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... learned early that he was not, and never would be, the fantasist that some of his earlier canvases indicate. Even his essays in portraiture, verging on the realistic, leaned nevertheless more toward the imaginative reality always. He knew, also, with clarity, the fine line of decision between imagination and vision, between the dramatic and the ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... anything she had allowed Arthur to see of late. Of course she delighted in Arthur's success; she was proud, indeed, through and through. Hadn't she always known that he had this gift, this quick, vivacious power of narrative, this genius—for it was something like it—for literary portraiture? And now at last the stimulus had come—and the opportunity with it. Could she ever forget the anxiety of the first lecture—the difficulty she had had in making him finish it—his careless, unbusiness-like management of the whole affair? But then had come the burst of praise and ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... glorious arbor sat these two shepherds, seeing their sheep feed, playing on their pipes many pleasant tunes, and from music and melody falling into much amorous chat. Drawing more nigh we might descry the countenance of the one to be full of sorrow, his face to be the very portraiture of discontent, and his eyes full of woes, that living he seemed to die: we, to hear what these were, stole privily behind the thicket, where we ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... accomplished as Mr. Herbert; of a mind easily warmed and singularly enthusiastic, the natural bent of his talent inclines him to romance. He has accordingly given us several stories abounding in stately scenes, and most impressive portraiture. Well skilled in the use of the mother tongue, as in the broad fields of classical literature, he has written essays of marked eloquence, and criticisms of excellent discrimination and a keen and thorough insight. His contributions to our periodicals have been even more happy than his fictions. ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... of this terrific conflict, 'the portraiture of two men of the largest volume,' was cut in the turf on the Hoe at an early date, and was only destroyed when the Citadel ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... technicalities, will be found highly attractive to the general reader. It contains a subtle dissection of a deeply interesting character, sketches of Heine, George Sand, Eugene de la Croix, Mickiewicz, and other celebrities in the world of literature and art, together with a most vivid portraiture of social life in Poland, a land which has ever excited so much admiration for its heroism, and compassion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... where Dante places the great souls of the classical world; Aidoneus himself being conceived, in the highest Greek sculpture, as but a gentler Zeus, the great innkeeper; so that when a certain Greek sculptor had failed in his portraiture of Zeus, because it had too little hilarity, too little, in the eyes and brow, of the open and cheerful sky, he only changed its title, and the thing passed excellently, with its heavy locks and shadowy eyebrows, ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... hope will become manifest to the reader as I unfold before him the actual history of his faith; but being, I suppose, myself one of the last surviving witnesses of the character of recluse life as it still existed in the beginning of this century, I can point to the portraiture of it given by Scott in the introduction to 'The Monastery' as one perfect and trustworthy, to the letter and to the spirit; and for myself can say, that the most gentle, refined, and in the deepest sense amiable, phases of character I have ever known, have been either those of monks, or of servants ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... biographer loves uncritically every detail that has to do with his subject, as a portrait-painter loves every detail that has to do with the appearance of his sitter. The best portraits, whether in biography—which is nothing if it is not portraiture—or in painting, are those in which the interpreter has been in a wholly receptive mood. This is not the critical attitude, which involuntarily takes arms against first one thing and then another in the subject before it; and this ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... with a sickening feeling, to the elements of art, distasteful as he found them. It was hard to pore over rectangles and curves, bones and muscles, angles and measurements, after sporting with irregular forms and fascinating colors. He tried portraiture, but he had no feeling for the business. He could not transfigure the dull and commonplace heads he was to copy. He had not the nice tact that makes beauty of ugliness without the loss of identity. He could not ennoble vulgarians. The sordid man bore the stamp of baseness ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... dim suggestions, Some idly-curious hand may draw My doubtful portraiture, as Cuvier Drew fish and bird ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... not have thought that such rarities could have been couched in so few and such ordinary words. I told you before whom these riddles did concern; and as they were opened, the people did evidently see it was so. Yea, they did gather that the things themselves were a kind of portraiture, and that of Emmanuel himself; for when they read in the scheme where the riddles were writ, and looked in the face of the Prince, things looked so like the one to the other that Mansoul could not forbear but say, This is the Lamb, this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... in those for whom he painted. His larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial rhetoric,—composition and color. His minor works are generally made subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connection between the portraits of various members of the ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... a number of excellent features for literary portraiture, because he is a compound of formality and explosiveness. The formal manners and dress and ponderous courtesy of the eighteenth century, combined with an outspoken way of calling things by their right names and a boyish petulance and quickness ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... going about in omnibuses, railway carriages, and in all public places. The cards have been shuffled, and they have drawn fresh lots in life and nationalities, but any one fairly well up in mediaeval and last century portraiture knows ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler |
