"Sitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... comminatory progress to admit gladly that in such societies are to be found plenty of talent and of what is much rarer, sincerity. Here are men who take art seriously; here are men who have no prospective sitter, no rich patron, no terrible drawing-master in mind; here are men to whom painting is the most important thing in the world. Unfortunately, in their isolation they are apt, like the rest, to come on the parish. Theirs is no vulgar provincialism; but in ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... newspaper. While the others conversed with him, I endeavoured to make unobserved a sketch of his face. The warder noticing this, called me to the front to make it boldly, and the prisoner, smiling, told me to go on with it; which I did, and that not so badly—at least, the sitter approved ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... to him, and Grant, knowing he had written books, desired to get at least a smattering of them before the sittings began. But some one, perhaps mischievously, told him Lewis was the author of The Monk, and this book he accordingly read. He took an early opportunity to refer to it to his sitter, who to his no small discomfiture disclaimed it. As conclusive proof of the truth of this denial, Lewis stated further that the book was written before he was born. Everybody was amused that Cornewall Lewis, so famous for abstruse learning, should have deemed it necessary ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... slow approaches herself, Euphemia was a great sitter at the feet of breathless volubility, and there were moments when she fairly hung upon the lips of Mademoiselle Marie de Mauves. Her intimacy with this chosen schoolmate was founded on the perception—all her own—that their differences were just the right ones. Mademoiselle de Mauves ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... kind that hyphenated Americans (in plays) would naturally assume to be the staple of a British Cabinet. Not that Goring really was such an ass; but it was Kit's plan to be so guileless as to induce the enemy agents to think they had a sitter. And I must say they were pretty easily induced. Their general schema was to get those inevitable papers, copy and return them, and delay Goring's visit to Washington, while the late lamented BERNSTORFF put in a suggestion which would make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... about a fortnight later accompanied by Haydon, who was to become the guest of his sitter, {47a} and George was left to the compilation of Celebrated Trials. Sir Richard Phillips appears to have been a man as prolific of suggestion as he was destitute of tact. He regarded his authors as the instruments of his own genius. Their business it was to carry out ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... who did not devise it, and who discouraged the exercise of political imagination in Ireland. It is said of an artist that it was his fantasy first to paint his ideal of womanly beauty, and, when this was done, to approximate it touch by touch to the sitter, and when the sitter cried, "Ah, now it is growing like!" the artist ceased, combining the maximum of ideal beauty possible with the minimum of likeness. Now if we had thought out the ideal structure of Irish government we might have offered it for criticism by those in whose ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... lady, whose beauty was clouded by a deep sadness, turned soon to the third sitter at the table, a tall, lank gentleman of perhaps thirty-five, who, with dark, brooding eyes and a serious limp, had just entered. He was the redoubtable Uncle John, of loud and fearless opinion; and, if the bar-room bowie had missed him, a stray Radical bullet had been more successful. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... surprised to be told that Old Phelps owned more of what makes the value of the Adirondacks than all of them put together, but it was true. This woodsman, this trapper, this hunter, this fisherman, this sitter on a log, and philosopher, was the real proprietor of the region over which he was ready to guide the stranger. It is true that he had not a monopoly of its geography or its topography (though his knowledge was superior in these respects); there were other trappers, and more deadly ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... paint Sir Jee's portrait on his usual conditions; namely, that the sitter should go to the little village in Bedfordshire where Cressage had his principal studio, and that the painting should be exhibited at the Royal Academy before being shown anywhere else. (Cressage was an R.A., but no one thought of ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... at him," said Jane. "My belief is that I missed him. Though how I came to do it beats me. I don't suppose I've missed a sitter like that since I was a child in the nursery. Of course," she proceeded, looking on the reasonable side, "the visibility wasn't good, and I fired from the hip, but it's no use saying I oughtn't at least to ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... how sorry he had been to hear it. He questioned: "Bad luck, I suppose? I thought it was a sitter ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... went below Dave had a steamer chair brought to the bridge, also a rug. The chair was placed where a canvas wind-shield would protect the sitter from the keen edge ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... of the sitter, and motioning him with his pencil into a particular attitude, Sir James Thornhill commenced operations; and, while he rapidly transferred his lineaments to the canvass, engaged him in conversation, in the course of which he artfully contrived ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... our getting a patent laying-box, furnished with (what he apologised to my aunt for calling) a false front. My aunt did not at first grasp the idea, but what Nibletts did in fact refer to was a contrivance that would admit one sitter only at a time, subsequent unauthorised entrance being cut off by an ingenious drop slide. Further elaborate construction also prevented the sitter herself from turning round to peck. She had to remain sitting till some human came and lifted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... Meanwhile my gain advanced to six pieces, and my desire of more increased in proportion: so that I moved to the higher table, where I laid half-a-guinea on every throw, and fortune still favouring me, I became a sitter, in which capacity I remained until it was broad day; when I found myself, after many vicissitudes, one hundred ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... the highest destinies." David, the artist, once a member of the Convention and a regicide, then an Imperialist, painted the portrait of Pius VII., and the Moniteur in the number of March 30, 1805, thus praised the picture and the sitter. "A large crowd gathered in the gallery of the Senate, to see the portrait of His Holiness by M. David, member of the Institute and first painter to the Emperor. This portrait is in every way worthy of the master's reputation. If the first ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... to have no power to follow the general example, but remained the only sitter in the entire congregation, with my eyes, nay, all my senses, fixed, riveted upon the preacher. This, of course, attracted his attention. I saw him look towards me with surprise, then he started, his voice hesitated for a moment, ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... impossible. Would any man who respected himself, or the feelings of his family and friends, consent to have his portrait painted with the offensive article upon his cranium? It would be almost a proof of insanity, both in the sitter who should insist upon, and the artist who should lend himself to, the perpetration of such an atrocity. We have but to fancy one out of the thousand statues of bronze or marble which it is proposed to erect to the memory of Sir Robert Peel in our great towns and cities, surmounted with ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... like a Christmas angel set a-flutter upon the top of a holiday fir in a sudden gust of wind, threw open the door, rushed halfway into the room, and stopped beside the chair of her aunt. Her hands dropped to the plump shoulder of the sitter. "Aunt Phoebe, there's a man down at the farther end of the strawberry patch! He's got a gun, Aunt Phoebe, and he's camped there, and when he heard me he jumped up and pointed the gun ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... him in twenty dollars a day. So that, in the course of a fortnight, our adventurers found themselves comparatively rich men. This was satisfactory, and Ned admitted as much one morning to Tom, as he sat on a three-legged stool in his studio—i.e. a dilapidated log-hut—preparing for a sitter, while the latter was busily engaged in concluding his morning repast ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... picture. But neither case would be identical in principle with mine. The artist and the mathematician would both have executed in their sleep what they had laid the foundation of when awake. I, on the other hand, would, should I transfer my aerial sitter to canvas, simply paint what I saw when wide awake, just as in undertaking to reproduce any other face from memory, whether observed once for twenty seconds or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... some?" I replied; and only too pleased, she squalled to an urchin who was distributing the squares plus a safety-pin. I was such a well-poised "rail-sitter" that I was entitled to wear both colours; and as this one was being ostentatiously fastened to the lapel of my over-jacket, I remembered the injunction to ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... members of the Academy of St. Luke, most of whom, judging by their physiognomies, were very commonplace people; a fact which makes itself visible in a portrait, however much the painter may try to flatter his sitter. Several of the pictures by Titian, Paul Veronese, and other artists, now exhibited in the gallery, were formerly kept in a secret cabinet in the Capitol, being considered of a too voluptuous character ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... some "fancy" dress. But surely if ever hair bore the stamp of unstudied, even ugly custom, it does so here. Then, too, Woltmann himself, as are all who adopt this explanation, is unable to reconcile the oldest age which can be assigned to this sitter with the youngest that can be assumed for the Basel painting of 1529 upon a hypothesis of only seven years' interval. Temperament and trouble can do much in seven years; but not so much as this. I say temperament advisedly; because all the evidence ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... in all gradations, from gentle and hospitable kindness to downright brutality." Further promises and assurances are given, and in July, as we learn from a letter of Southey's, the good Matilda was still high in hopes that her sitter would eventually sit. Her hopes could not have come from Southey, who had none. "You would have found him the most wonderful man living in conversation, but the most impracticable one for a painter, and had you begun the picture it is ten thousand ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... me all the intelligence of what had happened at court since I had left it; and although I professed to have renounced the world, and to have become a recluse, a sitter in a corner, as it is called, yet still I found that I had an ear for what was passing in it. They informed me that the chief executioner had returned from his campaign against the Russians, and had brought the Shah a present of two Georgian slaves, a male and a female, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... everybody. The following criticism of the picture has reached us, and as it represents a point of view which, so far as we know, has not found sympathy in the Press opinions which have already appeared, we print it for the edification of the artist, the sitter and any others who may have a few moments to devote ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... ungracious not to be so entirely thankful as I ought to this kind and merry people. We breakfasted with Mad. Mirbel, where were the Dukes of Fitz-James, and, I think, Duras,[394] goodly company—but all's one for that. I made rather an impatient sitter, wishing to talk much more than was agreeable to Madame. Afterwards we went to the Champs Elysees, where a balloon was let off, and all sorts of frolics performed for the benefit of the bons gens de Paris—besides stuffing them with victuals. I wonder ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... character of both, and this is party, the combination of able members of the legislature, united by similarity of views, and continuing a systematic struggle for the supremacy. This influence makes the minister, and directs even the sitter on the throne. And this influence, belonging solely to a free government, is essential to its existence. It is the legitimate medium between the people and the crown. It is the peaceful organ of that public voice which, without it, would speak only in thunder. It is that great ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... song of a nest, For it is not long:— You shall never light in a summer quest The bushes among— Shall never light on a prouder sitter, A fairer nestful, nor ever know A softer sound than their tender twitter, That ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... indignation was so precipitate in its results; otherwise the special artist who sketched Hum, the son of Buz, intended to have made a sketch of the old villain, as he sat with his luckless victim's hind legs projecting from his solemn mouth. With all his moral faults, he was a good sitter, and would probably have sat immovable any length of time ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... mysterious movements took place. Lombroso was very much disturbed by these inexplicable phenomena, and could not rest till he sat again. At the second seance spectral hands developed, profoundly mystifying every sitter, and Lombroso went away, promising to carry forward a study of spiritism. In a letter written the following June he manfully said: 'I am filled with confusion, and regret that I combated with so much persistence the possibilities of the facts ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn cosily up, and the tea-things stood ready to the sitter's elbow, the very sugar in the cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea-things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in his own ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... which was blazing, notwithstanding the heat of the season and of the country. It was one of those armchairs that you still see in old castles, and which seem made to read one's self to sleep in, so easy is every part of it. The sitter sinks into a circular cushion of down; if the head leans back, the cheeks rest upon pillows covered with silk, and the seat juts out so far beyond the elbows that one may believe the provident upholsterers of our forefathers sought to provide that the book should make no ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... remembered, with much contemptuous satisfaction, the ironical portrait of Sir Abel Barking adorning the wall of the latter's private room at the bank. He hailed the diabolic talent of the artist who had laid bare with such subtle skill the flatulence of his sitter. It was a pretty revenge, very assuaging just now to Iglesias. For the real man, as he reflected, was not the man who sat heavily self-complacent in a library chair, exuding platitudes and pride of patronage; but the man who hung upon ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... compared with Western customs. Neither chairs nor bedsteads existed; people sat and slept on the floor, separated from it only by mats made of rice-straw, by cushions or by woollen carpets, and in aristocratic houses there was a kind of stool to support the arm of the sitter, a lectern, and a dais for sitting on. Viands were served on tables a few inches high, and people sat while eating. From the middle of the seventh century a clepsydra of Chinese origin was used ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... end of the week, and I was still without a model. My nights had been nearly sleepless, and my days full of feverish anxiety: an active anxiety to accept another sitter and withstand the temptation of Viola, which fought desperately with the more passive anxiety not to be satisfied and to be obliged to yield. Between these two I had grown thin, as they fought within me, ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... Phillips, R.A., painted his portrait. He was a restless sitter until the painter remarked: "I have always heard, Mr. Borrow, that the Persian is a very fine language; is it so?" "It is, Phillips; it is." "Perhaps you will not mind reciting me something in the Persian tongue?" said Phillips. ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... took a sketch book in which he made silver-point sketches and portraits. A good number of its pages have come down to us, and a great many of the portraits he mentions having taken were done in it, and then cut out to give to the sitter. All these drawings are on the same sized paper. We reproduce one of them here (see page 156). Besides this sketch-book he evidently had a memorandum-book in which he recorded what he did, what he spent, whom he saw, and ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... just exactly such a collection of paltry individual facts as never was before,—a snarl and tangle of special conditions which it is his business to wind as much thread out of as he can. It is a good deal as when a painter goes to take the portrait of any sitter who happens to send for him. He has seen just such noses and just such eyes and just such mouths, but he never saw exactly such a face before, and his business is with that and no other person's,—with the features of the worthy ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... temperament, the facts seen by a particular mind. The landscape into which the painter has put nothing of his own personality is fitter for a surveyor's office than for a picture gallery. The portrait which gives nothing but the sitter's face is as dull as a photograph. Two portraits of the same man, two sketches of the same valley, not only are, but ought to be, quite different from each other. Nature, the facts of the particular face or scene, remain the same for both: but the two different artists, each bringing their ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... with the subject are ofttimes interesting and appropriate and the great majority of portraits include them. As soon therefore as we begin on any detail in the background we connect the portrait with the pictorial and the sitter becomes one of a number of elements in the scheme, the fulcrum on which they balance. A patch of sky, besides creating an expansion in the diameter of the picture introduces color, often ...
— Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures • Henry Rankin Poore
... portraits to paint, I'm sorry, for I shall not try to do any. I'm not fit for that kind of work. I don't say it because I despise the work, but because I despise myself. I should always let some wretched preoccupation of my own—some fancy, some whim—come between me and what I see my sitter to ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... too amused to be irritated. She was such a friendly little soul and so obviously devoted to Ruth that he felt she was entitled to be a nuisance as a sitter. He wondered more and more what weird principle of selection had been at work to bring Bailey and this butterfly together. He had never given any deep thought to the study of his brother-in-law's character; but, from his small knowledge of him, he would have ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... music and singing were never introduced as a means of harmonising the conditions. Mr. Stainton Moses says: "In our circle this harmonising is effected by means of perfumes and waves of cool-scented air." "If a new sitter is present, he or she is censed (if I may adopt the expression), and so initiated." "If a new intelligence is to communicate, or special honour to be paid to a chief, the room is pervaded by perfumes which grow stronger as the spirit enters." Sometimes the scent was in a liquid form, and apparently ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... of the minute Mamma would allow me to the sensation of her cheek against my lips, as a painter who can have his subject for short sittings only prepares his palette, and from what he remembers and from rough notes does in advance everything which he possibly can do in the sitter's absence. But to-night, before the dinner-bell had sounded, my grandfather said with unconscious cruelty: "The little man looks tired; he'd better go up to bed. Besides, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... She was incapable of stating the deeps of character; and had she had the power, she would have looked upon it as something of an indecency—or worse, an indelicacy. She would, in fact, have preferred to deny the deeps. She sets her sitter ever in the drawing-room of fashion, draws a heavy curtain with a rattle between the drawing-room and the inner boudoir (the "sulking room"), slams the door on the bedroom, or any hint that there is a bedroom, before she cries "come in," to admit us to her studio; ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... call, after due manipulation of the proper instrument. "Glorious trio of departed statesmen!" thought Jewett, "help us by your counsels in this the day of our nation's great distress." Next Henry Clay's outline was faintly shown from the tomb, and here the sitter remarked that he expected him. After him came Stephen A. Douglas, and the whole affair was so entirely satisfactory to Jewett, that, after paying fifty dollars for what he had witnessed, he, the next day, implored the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... placing his subject in a chair and looking at him attentively for a few minutes, to dismiss the subject and paint a perfect likeness of him from the visual image which recurred to the artist every time he turned his eyes to the chair where the sitter had been placed. On the other hand, a young lady, a student in my psychology class, tells me that she is never able to recall the looks of her mother when she is absent, even if the separation has been only for a few moments. She can get an image of the form, with the color and cut of the ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... throughout his face there was something of the knobbed and gnarled character of that monarch of our woods. I will add, that as this picture was painted immediately after Cromwell's accession to the sovereign power, the princely aspect of the sitter was never more genuine, perhaps, than at that moment. But there was one thing which Lely assuredly took upon himself to qualify; to wit, the redness of the nose. It was too red in ordinary, though not so much so as his libellers gave out, nor so distinguished ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... bedded on a rock, with silver fishes playing rapid games of hide and seek, love and hate, in the clear briny depths above and beneath! If the angels ever look out of their sphere of intense spiritual realities to indulge in a laugh, methinks such a lonely tripod-sitter, cased over with his invulnerable, non-conducting cloak and hood,—shrinking, dodging, or bracing himself up on the defensive, as the crowd fans him with its rush or jostles up against him,—like the man who fancied ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... anything illustrious or profound. Neither as poet nor Hellenist would he ever leave any great mark behind him; but where other men talk of "the household of faith," he might have talked rather of "the household of letters," and would have seen himself as a warm and familiar sitter by its hearth. A new edition of some favourite classic; his weekly Athenaeum; occasional correspondence with a French or Italian scholar—(he did not read German, and disliked the race)—these were his pleasures. For the rest he was ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... good-looking even now, and perhaps, after being repulsed in their quest for bed and board, drifted off into an idle dream of how they might have met her a few years ago when they were less famous but more magnetically attractive. What a sitter she would have been for them, if she wouldn't be anything else! They admired the extreme delicacy of her nose that seemed so narrow in the well-rounded face, the loose brown hair that showed such a red flash in it beneath her sunbonnet, the perfect modeling of full forearms, firm neck, and ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... time he sat for his picture to Mr. West, an American artist, who has himself given, in one of our periodical publications, the following account of his noble sitter:— ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... the mark; but it was erring on the safe side. Who would not sink the man in the gentleman? After all, perhaps the sages and wits were not altogether disinterested: almost every one of them filled Sam Winnington's famous sitter's chair, and depended on Sam's tasteful pencil handing down their precious noses and ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... them in the same breath with the name of van Manderpootz? A pack of jackals, eating the crumbs of ideas that drop from my feast of thoughts! Had you gone back into the last century, now—had you mentioned Einstein and de Sitter—there, perhaps, are names worthy to rank with (or just ...
— The Worlds of If • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... the genius of observation is almost the whole of human genius. It was natural it should please her, since it was the most conspicuous of her many gifts. As we might expect, therefore, she was especially successful as a portrait painter, for she had a knack of catching her sitter's likeness with the bloom of nature yet fresh upon it. All her likenesses are singularly individual, and we realize their character at a glance. Look, for example, at her portrait of a Parisian swell, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... leather thongs. The tunic of the chief was elaborately embroidered on the breast in silk, a winged black horse being the central and most conspicuous design. The trophy hanging at the back of the sitter's chair consisted of a small circular shield, with a formidable axe, double-handed sword, and mace crossing each other, behind it, the whole being surmounted by a handsome bronze headpiece, or helmet ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Grafton Galleries under the name of The Gilded Lily. No one had ever known or was ever likely to know whether the title referred to the decorative, if botanically impossible, blossom in her hand, or to the golden hair of the seductive sitter. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... former voyage; and he brought up for exhibition, and for the practical trial by the winner of the canoe chase, a very narrow and crank boat, rowed by oars jointed to a short mast in front of the sitter, and thus obtaining one of the advantages possessed by canoeists, that their faces are turned to the bow, and so they see where ...
— The Voyage Alone in the Yawl "Rob Roy" • John MacGregor
... Nina's canoe loomed up close to the log, canted high out of the water by the weight of the sitter in the stern. Maroola laid his hand on the stem and leaped lightly in, giving it a vigorous shove off. The light craft, obeying the new impulse, cleared the log by a hair's breadth, and the river, ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... such in their devotions. The panes were very small and lozenge-shaped, and soldered to one another with strips of lead: the like you may see to this day in our rural cottages. The chairs were rude and primitive, all but the arm-chair, whose back, at right angles with its seat, was so high that the sitter's head stopped two feet short of the top. This chair was of oak, and carved at the summit. There was a copper pail, that went in at the waist, holding holy water, and a little hand-besom to sprinkle it far and wide; and a long, narrow, but massive oak table, and a dwarf sticking ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... and the large gardens, or small park, whichever you like to call it, which surrounded the house, afforded plenty of sitting-out room. No one who shared in the parties will ever forget the long and good talks on the lawn on which the wicker chairs were set with brightly coloured rugs for the sitter's feet. Guests worthy of that honour were taken through the orchid house by Mr. Chamberlain himself, for his knowledge and love of his favourite flower was no ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... a foolish and dull writer, while my faults please myself, or at least escape my notice, than be wise and smart for it. There lived at Argos a man of no mean rank, who imagined that he was hearing some admirable tragedians, a joyful sitter and applauder in an empty theater: who [nevertheless] could support the other duties of life in a just manner; a truly honest neighbor, an amiable host, kind toward his wife, one who could pardon his slaves, nor would rave at the breaking of a bottle-seal: ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... it is by his body that he exists; the reality of my friend is what he essentially is, what he is of the spirit. A photograph of a man registers certain facts of his appearance at that moment. The eye and the mind of the artist discern the truth which underlies the surface; the artist feels his sitter not as a face and a figure, a mere body, but as a personality; and the portrait expresses ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... blacksmith's skill could break the link. Ecclefechan held us next, Where old Tom Carlyle was vexed By the clamour and the strife Of this strange and varied life. We saw his pipe, we saw his hat, We saw the stone on which he sat. The solid stone is resting there, But where the sitter? Where, oh! where? ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a stone. It was too obvious that he had stayed at home, not to be with her, but merely because his sitter was unobtainable. ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... interest we all felt in the result of this struggle, that our feelings during the battle could not be compared to it. I could see Marble move his body, as a sitter in a boat is apt to do, at each jerk of the oars, under the notion it helps the party along. Diogenes actually called out, and this a dozen times at least, to encourage the men to pull for their ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... explanation (?) by no means covers the whole situation. In the first place, it does not cover the vividness and the emotional content often displayed by the sensitive. The sitter is very seldom conscious of anything approaching it. It comes nearer to, in fact almost seems identical with, the frequent vividness and intensity of dreams. But where do dreams come from, whether in sleep, or in a waking ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... keen photographer himself. He had photographed every body in the office including the peons and sweepers, and had even supplied every sitter of his with copies of his handiwork. So he most willingly consented, and anxiously waited for the Sunday on which the ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... picture is very dark, on canvass, with a black frame having a narrow gilt moulding. As the existence of this portrait is perhaps not known, mention of the fact might interest some of your readers. The picture, including frame, is perhaps in size thirty inches by twenty-four; and the age of the sitter, whose features are delineated with remarkable effects is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... and sweethearts go streaming by to the various barracks. One of the boys to whom Tyler had never even spoken suddenly took a picture out of his blouse pocket and showed it to Tyler. It was a cheap little picture—one of the kind they sell two for a quarter if one sitter; two for thirty-five if two. This was a twosome. The boy, and a girl. A healthy, wide-awake wholesome looking small-town girl, who has gone through high school and ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... chemically-prepared surfaces of the images formed by the camera requires a previous arrangement within the focus of the object to be represented, for, otherwise—as often found in bad photographs—the legs of the sitter might appear out of all proportion with the head, and so on—so we here to first arrange our sentences, and impress every letter to appear on paper in our minds, before it becomes fit to be read. For the present, it is all I can ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... defendant consented to enlarge to fifteen pence, provided the artist would agree to draw him in "full fig:"—red velvet smalls—nankeen gaiters—sky-blue waistcoat—canary wipe—and full-bottomed fantail. The bargain was struck and the picture finished, but when presented to the sitter, he swore "he'd see the man's back open and shet afore he'd pay the wally of a farden piece for sitch a reg'lar 'snob' as he was made ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... him straight in the face, "every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself. The reason I will not exhibit this picture is ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... one of the tattooing artists would crawl over the bulwarks, followed by his sitter; and then a bare arm or leg would be extended, and the disagreeable business of "pricking" commence, right under my eyes; or an irruption of tars, with ditty-bags or sea-reticules, and piles of old trowsers to mend, would break in upon my seclusion, and, forming ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... were stolen from one of our pig- pens. The great Lafaele appeared to my wife uneasy, so she engaged him in conversation on the subject, and played upon him the following engaging trick. You advance your two forefingers towards the sitter's eyes; he closes them, whereupon you substitute (on his eyelids) the fore and middle fingers of the left hand; and with your right (which he supposes engaged) you tap him on the head and back. When you let him open his eyes, he sees you withdrawing the two forefingers. 'What that?' ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Whistler written to Henry at a later date which refers to the picture, and suggests portraying him in all his characters. It is common knowledge that the sitter never cared much about the portrait. Henry had a strange affection for the wrong picture of himself. He disliked the Bastien Lepage, the Whistler, and the Sargent, which never even saw the light. He ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... blackguard &c 949; barrater^, barrator^; shyster [U.S.]. traitor, betrayer, archtraitor^, conspirator, Judas, Catiline; reptile, serpent, snake in the grass, wolf in sheep's clothing, sneak, Jerry Sneak, squealer [Slang], tell-tale, mischief-maker; trimmer, fence-sitter, renegade &c (tergiversation) 607; truant, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... through the valley of the Sitter, a stream fed by the Sentis Alps, and spanned by a bridge hundreds of feet above the water. The same smooth carpet of velvet ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... and to these joys were added the pleasure of larger conversation. The model gave Grace many opportunities of making remarks, or asking questions, and Henry contrived to say so many things in answer to one. Sculptor and sitter made acquaintance with each other's ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... The effect of this personality on the outward form, and the influence it has in modifying the aspect of body and features, are the things that concern the portrait draughtsman: the seizing on and expressing forcefully the individual character of the sitter, as expressed by his ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... has haunted me, and I have given full rein to imagination and have retold it in my own way. It deals with the old law—the old border days—therefore it is better first. Soon, perchance, I shall have the pleasure of writing of the border of to-day, which in Joe Sitter's laconic speech, "Shore is 'most as bad an' ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... sitting children clasps his unoccupied left hand upon the upraised thumb of his companion, thus raising the height of the barrier by the width of the palm. The line starts again and all jump this. Then the second sitter adds his palm and thumb to the barrier, and the line of players attack this. It is more than likely that some one will fail to clear this last barrier, and the one who does so squats down, pressing close to the other two, ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... with a pearl pin in a black tie, sitting rather on the edge of his chair, leaning forward, so that the head is thrown into the light. The eyes are well opened, and the jaw comes out, a hard mean jaw; but the work of the artist, the real work that reveals the soul of the sitter, is shown in three features, if we except the pugnacious shoulders. In the face are two of these features: the mouth, a hard, coarse, furtive mouth,—the mouth of the liar who is not polished,—the peasant liar who has been caught and has brazened it out; the mouth and the forehead, full ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... he found himself a little more able to cope with his sitter. He was in possession, at any rate, of fresh topics—need not feel himself so tongue-tied in the presence of this cosmopolitan culture of hers, which she did her feminine best to disguise—which nevertheless made the atmosphere of ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lends to the matter in hand a certain false and specious glitter. By the necessity of the case, again, he is forced to view his subject throughout in a particular illumination, like a studio artifice. Like Hales with Pepys, he must nearly break his sitter's neck to get the proper shadows on the portrait. It is from one side only that he has time to represent his subject. The side selected will either be the one most striking to himself, or the one most obscured by controversy; ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when looking at it, but this morning she saw that it was cruel, impossible, and treacherous. A touch or two at the clay obliterated the sinister expression, and, being unable to do more until the arrival of her sitter, she sat down to write ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... painting of this portrait a very good story is told. Borrow was a very bad sitter, he was ever anxious to get out into the fresh air and sunlight. Philips was greatly hindered by this restlessness, but one day he hit upon a plan which conquered the chafing child of Nature and served his own purpose admirably. He was aware of Borrow's wonderful ...
— George Borrow in East Anglia • William A. Dutt
... for him, he, perhaps wisely for his fame, reduced the number of his ordinary sitters, receiving none until afternoon. The picturing of what he termed "her divine beauty" became a passion with him; and the enthusiasm of the sitter was nearly as great as that of the painter, and she enacted his classic conceptions. The result is a superb series of pictures of faultless female form, and loveliness of feature. Of the model's immoral career we have ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... since. The original of the latter soon came and stood before it. He had won regatta prizes; and the flags of four discordant colours were painted round him by the artist, who had evidently cared more to commemorate the triumphs of his sitter and to strike a likeness than to secure the tone of his own picture. This champion turned out a fine fellow—Corradini—with one of the brightest little gondoliers of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... affair, made to accommodate itself to the shape of the room, but with a hollowed-out space on the window-side large enough to hold a chair for the sitter who would use its top as a desk. On it were various articles suitable to its double use. Without being crowded, it displayed a pile of magazines and pamphlets, boxes for stationery, a writing pad with its accompaniments, ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... Cosmo saw whose shadow darkened the doorway, he rose in haste, and standing with his hand upon the arm of the chair, waited for his father to seat himself in it. The laird acknowledged his attention with a smile, sat down, and looked like the last sitter grown suddenly old. He put out his hand to the boy across the low arm of the chair, and the boy laid his hand in his father's, and so they remained, neither saying a word. The laird leaned back, and sat resting. All ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... by no means true, but Lady Ogram had always been a bad sitter to the camera, and had destroyed most of its results. The oil painting in the dining-room she regarded with a moderate complacency. Many a time during the latter years of withering and enfeeblement her memory had turned to that shining head in marble, which was hidden away amid half ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... years. He even went so far as to sit to Bugiardini for his likeness, at the request of Ottaviano de' Medici. Giuliano, having painted and talked nonsense for two hours, at last exclaimed, to his sitter's great relief, "Now, Michelangelo, come and look at yourself; I have caught your very expression." But what was Michelangelo's horror to see himself depicted with eyes which were neither straight nor a pair! The worthy artist looked from ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... promised a sight of it just as soon as it arrived from the photographer's. I confess I had not been sanguine as to the result, although I knew a handsome portrait was confidently expected by the sitter. One morning he ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... being seated in a chair, man and chair were lifted up by the fair performer placing her hands against the sides. To substantiate the claim that she herself exerted no force, chair and man were lifted without her touching the chair at all. The sitter was asked to put his hands under the chair; the performer put her hands around and under his in such a way that it was impossible for her to exert any force on the chair except through his hands. The chair at once lifted ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... Frederick's theory rather a rough one at first, she saw how he worked it out into continual production of kindness in fact. After a bad night with his mother (for he insisted on taking his turn as a sitter-up) he was busy next morning before breakfast, contriving a leg-rest for Dixon, who was beginning to feel the fatigues of watching. At breakfast-time, he interested Mr. Hale with vivid, graphic, rattling accounts ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... been happy. In this year Rembrandt painted the famous "Night Watch," a picture representing the company of Francis Banning Cocq, and incidentally a day scene in spite of its popular name. The work succeeded in arousing a storm of indignation, for every sitter wanted to have equal prominence in the canvas. They had subscribed equally to the cost, and Rembrandt had dared to compose ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels
... they both chattered freely during the sittings. This is, of course, necessary, if the artist is to know his sitter's face with all its varying expressions; and Audrey had given Ted a great many to choose from. This morning, however, he worked steadily and in a silence which she was the ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... shaking hands with Mrs. Rider the doctor's wife, caused unmitigated disgust throughout all the back streets of Carlingford; and "that Phoebe a-sweeping in as if the chapel belonged to her," was almost more than the oldest sitter could bear. Phoebe, it must be added, felt her elevation to the full, and did not spare her congregation. Sometimes she would have the audacity to walk from the vestry to the pew, as if she were an office-bearer, instead of coming in humbly by the door as became a woman. ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... blew over it should be a cyclone and you and me in the cellar? No siree, I'm no sitter-down. I'm a fighter, even when I fight in secret. Damn this feller, Percival, and his gift for making friends and stirring up enthusiasm for himself! I suspect he has ambitions. So much the worse for him, if James Murdock is in the ring against him. Do you know my inferences? I am sure he is ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... clouds that menaced her sitter—"take this pad an' write a question on it. Don't lemme see it, mind! When you got it all wrote out, fold it up tight an' hold it against your forehead. Never ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... yours," Kielland continued, warming to his subject. "From a scientific man, it's a prize. Anatomical description: limited because of absence of autopsy specimens. Apparently have endoskeleton, but organization of the internal organs remains obscure. Thought to be mammalianoid—there's a fence-sitter for you—but can't be certain of this because no young have been observed, nor any females in gestation. Extremely gregarious, curious, playful, irresponsible, etc., etc., etc. Habitat under natural conditions: uncertain. Diet: uncertain. Social organization: uncertain." ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... construction that any master who can color can always do any pane of his window that he likes, separately from the rest. Thus, you see, here is one of Sir Joshua's first sittings: the head is very nearly done with the first color; a piece of background is put in round it: his sitter has had a pretty silver brooch on, which Reynolds, having done as much as he chose to the face for that time, paints quietly in its place below, leaving the dress between to be fitted in afterwards; and he puts a little patch of the yellow gown that is to be, at the side. And it follows also from ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... attention, any in steadfast gazing, any in passes of the hand hither and thither—if there be any magic in ce doux demi-jour so loved in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and feathered, in freedom of admiration, "and all in the way of business"—then is a lovable sitter to a love-like painter in "parlous" vicinity (as the new school would phrase it) to sweet heart-land! Pleasure in a vocation has no offset in political economy as honor has ("the more honor the less profit"), or portrait-painters would ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... was found that the repairs would cost about a thousand pounds; and by the plan, that the seats, at eighteen pence a sitter, would yield better than a hundred pounds a-year; so that there was no scruple, on the part of the town-council, in borrowing the money wanted. This was the first public debt ever contracted by the corporation, and people were very fain to get their money lodged at five per cent. on such good ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... reported to be a capital "sitter." He had the French painter Borchart staying with him at Potsdam to paint his portrait. Borchart describes him as an ideal model, so still and patiently did he sit, and this at times for more than two hours. He talked freely during ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... a lamb by the friend, by the friend, That stuck to my skirts like a burr; I have borne the stale talk without end, without end, Of the sitter whom nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... clear that the investigator has to deal with a simple question of legerdemain. The slate, with its message already written, must in some way be substituted for one which the sitter knows to be clean. The short answers must be written under trying circumstances, out of sight, under the table, with all motions of the arm or hand concealed. It is useless to attempt to limit the methods whereby these two objects may be attained. All that we can do is to describe ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... my sitter I found that the blight which had always settled upon them when they were together was disappearing quickly. They were talking quite amiably, and although I should have been glad to have said something to show ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... the 'Southampton' was Mr. George Mouncey, of the firm of Mouncey & Gray, solicitors, Staple's Inn. 'He was,' says Hazlitt, 'the oldest frequenter of the place and the latest sitter-up; well-informed, unobtrusive, and that sturdy old English character, a lover of truth and justice. Mouncey never approved of anything unfair or illiberal, and, though good-natured and gentleman-like, never let an absurd or unjust ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... thank for it, sir. It was ripping of you to let me have first shot; and you gave me such a sitter that I couldn't ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... moment in my career. A very influential sitter of mine—you remember the fat lady with the crimson curtain behind her?—had come to the conclusion or been persuaded that I had painted her old and vulgar, which, in fact, she was. Her whole clique had turned against ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... signboard which should proclaim to the passer-by the name and nature of the Society. My offer was accepted, and the Board was sent down to my studio, where I treated it as I should a most distinguished sitter—as a picture or an etching—throwing my artistic soul into the Board, which gradually became a Board no longer, as it grew into a picture. You say they say it was only a butterfly. Mendacity could go no ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... palms on the stack, and after a time examine the large slate for a message, but find none. I may incidentally remark that this last examination unconsciously verifies in the sitter's mind the fact that I actually ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... of his glory"—that was what the women called it. I can hear Mrs. Gideon Thwing—his last Chicago sitter—deploring his unaccountable abdication. "Of course it's going to send the value of my picture 'way up; but I don't think of that, Mr. Rickham—the loss to Arrt is all I think of." The word, on Mrs. Thwing's lips, multiplied its rs as though they were reflected ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... call, when Gerda, cool and nonchalant, dropped, a sitter at Rodney's feet, and when Rodney smashed it back she said, "But father's too much ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... by turns drawing, enticing his refractory sitter, exhorting her to bloom, and complimenting her delicate beauty, until James, with a groan, exclaimed, 'Is silence impossible to you, Fitzjocelyn? I would go into the garden, but that I should be beset by the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... artistic order, and quite a relief from the conventional positions and accessories so frequently seen in professional work. The expressions secured are also, as a rule, unusually pleasing and natural. This is, no doubt, in a great measure due to the sitter feeling more at ease in the amateur friend's drawing room than in a stranger's studio. Particularly is this the case in some excellent work—full-length pictures—sent from the other side of the Atlantic, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... tones of grey and brown which he was so fond of employing, the picture of the Pope is a radiant harmony of rose red and white. In its realism it is even more surprising than most of the other portraits, considering how ugly the face had to be made to resemble nature, although the sitter was of a still higher rank than ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... out ostensibly to get a breather, and they beat it down here. If you want an instance of the irony of fate, Bertie, get acquainted with this. Here's the first commission I have ever had to paint a portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it rubbing the thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into the ugly face of a little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit me behind the ear with a blackjack and ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Bunny: one's at the bottom of the Mediterranean, and one's an old Australian desirous of dying in the old country, but in no immediate danger of dying anywhere. The old Australian doesn't know a soul in town; he's got to be consistent, or he's done. This sitter Theobald is his only friend, and has seen rather too much of him; ordinary dust won't do for his eyes. Begin to see? To pick you out of a crowd, that was the game; to let old Theobald help to pick you, better still! To start with, he was dead against my having anybody at all; wanted me all ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... motive of the artist's visit. Lyon remarked that it was a great disadvantage to him not to have had some preliminary acquaintance with Sir David—in most cases he found that so important. But the present sitter was so far advanced in life that there was doubtless no time to lose. 'Oh, I can tell you all about him,' said Mr. Ashmore; and for half an hour he told him a good deal. It was very interesting as well as very eulogistic, and Lyon could see that he was a very nice old man, to have endeared ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... a court yard that you can at pleasure cover with a linen awning that light will be good. Or when you want to take a portrait do it in dull weather, or as evening falls, making the sitter stand with his back to one of the walls of the court yard. Note in the streets, as evening falls, the faces of the men and women, and when the weather is dull, what softness and delicacy you may perceive in them. Hence, Oh Painter! have a court arranged with ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... erected at Liverpool. Thus, by a curious coincidence, the Liverpool stone-cutter was set to immortalize the features and figure of the Killingworth engine-man. Did those two great men, as they sat together in one room, sculptor and sitter, know one another's early history and strange struggles, we wonder? Perhaps not; but if they did, it must surely have made a bond of union between them. At any rate, Gibson greatly admired Stephenson, just ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... to have fared better than L'Indaco. He painted a portrait of Michael Angelo with a towel tied round his head like a turban, now in the Casa Buonarroti, at Florence. From the age of the sitter it appears to belong to this period; the towel may have been used to protect the hair and head of the artist from falling colour as he painted the roof above him. It is an energetic head, with jet black hair and sallow complexion, with many lines and ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... talk," snapped the young man. "Every time we decide to line something up you get finicky about a sitter. How many times have we sat for Ruth Whatshername? And we're up at Ellen Fox's a couple of nights, too. Then our kid comes down with a cold or something and they're not good enough. No wonder we ...
— The Amazing Mrs. Mimms • David C. Knight
... I impose a most agreeable task, for it is charming—that portrait dated 1890, and belonging also to M. Jastrebzoff; do you not feel that the author is a little too well pleased with himself? Do you not fancy that he will soon be regaling his sitter with a good, round platitude from the exterior boulevards or a morsel from some regimental ditty in which he once excelled, that, in another moment, he will be tapping him on the back, and that he has gone a little out of his way to tell you these things? The Primitives tell ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... Scogan, Denis climbed the little ladder and stepped over the threshold. He looked suspiciously from Gombauld to his sitter, and could learn nothing from the expression of their faces except that they both seemed pleased to see the visitors. Were they really glad, or were they cunningly simulating ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... large screen kept both artist and sitter apart from the rest of the studio, but Arthur Kirtland liked to be wholly alone, and undisturbed while painting a portrait, and he was very glad when the children tired of the pictures in the large studio, and went out into the ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... of which the handwriting seemed to him familiar. A needle with some black silk hanging from it had been thrust into the stuffed arm of the chair; the cushion at the back still bore the imprint of the sitter. She had been there, not three minutes ago, and had fled before him. The door into Mrs. Boyce's ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... filled with rocking-chairs imported from the United States; they are fond of sitting in chairs tilted against the wall, as we sometimes do at home. Indeed they go beyond us in this respect; for in Cuba they have invented a kind of chair which, by lowering the back and raising the knees, places the sitter precisely in the posture he would take if he sat in a chair leaning backward against a wall. It is a luxurious attitude, I must own, and I do not wonder that it is a favorite with lazy people, for it relieves one of all the trouble of keeping the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... conception to a higher level and has portrayed the thinker whom the world will honour many centuries hence. Some will perhaps prefer the more objective treatment; and it is certain that Watts's ambition led him into difficult paths. Striving to represent the soul of his sitter, he was conscious at times that he failed—that he could not see or realize what he was searching for. More than once he abandoned a commission when he felt this uncertainty in himself. But when the accord between artist and sitter was perfect, he achieved ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... What a persistent sitter the female blackcap is! One day I discovered a nest in a fence post by the wayside. Pressing the bark aside, I could plainly see the little owner snuggling close to the bottom of the cup. I thrust my finger through the aperture and gently stroked her head and back. Still she hugged the nest, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... by delicately-adjusted clockwork to counteract the apparent daily motion of the stars caused by the rotation of the earth. The picture would otherwise be spoiled, just as a portrait is ruined if the sitter does not ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... obtrusive, possibly more timid, attitude of Hoppner in the presence of nature gives him a greater claim to our sympathy to-day. He was apparently preoccupied above all in rendering the individual characteristics of his sitter; and there are many instances in his work where a painter can see that he has chosen to retain certain qualities of resemblance, rather than risk their loss by an exhibition of bravura painting. Sir Thomas Lawrence is one, on the contrary, before whose ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... Highlanders. Brought up on her father's station, South Canterbury. Educated, Christchurch Normal School. Public school teacher for four years; afterwards private teacher and regular contributor to 'Otago Witness' and other journals. 'The Spirit of the Rangatira, and other Ballads' (Melbourne, 1889). 'The Sitter on the Rail, and other Poems' ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... a little the work, but sweetening the temper of the painter, as he went on with his study of the mask and helmet into which the Gorgon stare of the Unideal had petrified the face and head of his sitter. He found the situation trying nevertheless. It was as if Cupid had been set by Jupiter to take a portrait of Io in her stall, while evermore he heard his Psyche fluttering about among the peacocks in the yard. For the girl had bewitched him at first sight. He thought ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... at least had been her mother's—and the final day was already an hour old. But Alexander Minchin was a late sitter, as his young wife knew to her cost, and to-night he had told her where he meant to sleep, but she had not heard him come up. The room would have been the back drawing-room in the majority of such houses, and Rachel peeped in on ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... rest were slain with the Sword of the Sitter on the horse, (The Conquering Christ,) which sword proceeded out of His mouth." "He speaks ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... more interest. I could not see into the nest, for there was no building high enough to overlook it, but I could see the bird when he stood upon the edge. Sitting, in a warm climate, is not particularly close work. Although the weather was cool, yet when the sun was out the sitter left her nest from six to eight minutes at a time, and as often as once in twenty minutes. Of course in rain she had not so much liberty, and on some days left only when her mate was ready to take her place, which ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Marien, "I can say nothing," and he made ready for his sitter the next day, by turning two or three studies of the nude, which might have shocked her, with ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... Dulwich Gallery of Pictures. It is in the portrait of Wouvermans, by Rembrandt. It is just so much of a resemblance as to remind the friends of the poet,—though not such a one as the immortal Dutchman would have made, had the poet been his sitter. It has a plaintive and melancholy expression, which, I rejoice to say, I do ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... properties, the lad, with a very sweet smile of kindness and affection lighting up his honest face, took one of two Bramah's house-keys with which he was provided, and gave it to his father: "That's your key, sir," he said to the Colonel; "and you must be my first sitter, please, father; for though I'm a historical painter, I shall condescend to do a few portraits, you know." The Colonel took his son's hand, and grasped it; as Clive fondly put the other hand on his father's shoulder. Then Colonel Newcome walked away into the next room for a minute or ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... portrait-sittings. He could talk and smoke, and he could incidentally acquire information. He liked to discuss any man's profession with him, and in his talks with Flagg he made a sincere effort to get that insight which would enable him to appreciate the old masters. Flagg found him a tractable sitter, and a most interesting one. Once he paid him a compliment, then apologized for having said ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... chance is allowed in any shop or tavern, except in billiard-saloons and coffee-houses, where draughts and dominoes, chess and backgammon are tolerated. After a certain fixed hour of the night, no person is allowed to drive about in a Volante with the head up, unless it rains or the sitter be an invalid; the penalty is fifteen shillings. No private individual is allowed to give a ball or a concert without permission of the authorities. Fancy Londonderry House going to the London police-office to get permission for a quadrille or a concert. How pleasant! The specific ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... company was one to flatter the artist as much his sitter, so completely did it represent that unamity of opinion which constitutes social strength. Not one the number was troubled by any personal theory of art: all they asked of a portrait was that the costume ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... sitter no portrait painter ever had in England. Feed him up first, get a boy to keep the flies from him, and he will remain almost immoveable through the day. He will put on a sad expression in the morning which will not change; he will give no trouble ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... serious diseases. Light, once admitted, supplies our wants till nightfall: air requires to be replaced at very short intervals. Light may be conveniently admitted from above: air requires to be admitted on the level of the sitter. Light, by the aid of ground glass, may be modified permanently: air requires to be variously adjusted according to its direction, its velocity, the seasons, the time of the day, the number ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... gathered from the fact that, one day, while my companion stood on the station platform, drawing a picture of this scene, a brick chimney, a portrait of which he had just completed, softly collapsed before our eyes, for all the world like a sitter who, having held a pose too ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... his customary wig, his own scant brown hair, and, on this occasion, masquerades in a furred robe, and falling collar. But even through the disguise of a studio 'costume,' the finely-perceptive genius of Reynolds has managed to suggest much that is most appealing in his sitter's nature. Past suffering, present endurance, the craving to be understood, the mute deprecation of contempt, are all written legibly in this pathetic picture. It has been frequently copied, often very ineffectively, for so subtle is the art that the slightest deviation ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... chickens; and what is more curious, the utterly sterile male hybrids from the pheasant and the fowl act in the same manner, "their delight being to watch when the hens leave their nests, and to take on themselves the office of a sitter."[119] That admirable observer Reaumur[120] asserts that a cock, by being long confined in solitude and darkness, can be taught to take charge of young chickens; he then utters a peculiar cry, and retains during his whole life this newly acquired maternal instinct. ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Volume II (of 2) • Charles Darwin
... Holbein showed, that he should be condemned to portrait painting, yet by no means undervaluing or slurring over his work. He 'would detain the persons who sat to him to dinner for an opportunity of studying their countenances and re-touching their pictures,' 'would have a sitter, sitting to him seven entire days, mornings and evenings, and would not once let the man see the picture till it pleased the painter.' Van Dyck appears to have been a man with the possibilities in him of greater things ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... is a sort of mark for all those (and we have several of that stamp) who like to tease other people's understandings as wool-combers tease wool. He is certainly the flower of the flock. He is the oldest frequenter of the place, the latest sitter-up, well-informed, inobtrusive, and that sturdy old English character, a lover of truth and justice. I never knew Mounsey approve of anything unfair or illiberal. There is a candour and uprightness about his mind which can neither be wheedled nor browbeat into unjustifiable ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... should have a chair with the seat not more than twelve inches high. For a man even, it should not be more than fifteen or sixteen inches. (These dimensions apply to the front of the seat.) The back part should be at least two inches lower. With this inclination, the sitter will slide backward, against the back of the chair, instead of sliding forward, as he generally does. This sliding forward produces a strain upon the small of the back, and is, in fact, the cause of most of the fatigue in sitting. The width of the chair-seat from front ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... the sketch-book. The sudden sight of oneself as one appears in another's eyes is always a shock, even to the most sophisticated sitter. To Paul it was uncanny. He had often seen his own reflection and was familiar with his own appearance, but this was the first time that he had looked at himself impersonally. The sketch was vivid, the likeness excellent; the ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... determined to get a good portrait of some of them, and accordingly took my sketch-book and pencil, and seated myself very near to one of them, and began my operations, feeling sure I had now got a most patient sitter, for they will lie for weeks together without stirring; but I had to keep throwing small pebbles at him, in order to make him open his eyes, and prevent his going to sleep. The flies appear to torment these unwieldy monsters most cruelly, ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... she said, turning to Mr. McVickar. "If you were at Oxford you would call this room the 'sitter' and that the 'bedder,'" nodding toward the room where they had laid aside ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... "Entertaining? Me, the sitter? Why, I've always heard it was an important part of a portrait-painter's work to keep the subject interested ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... discoveries and satisfactions of the soul. Winter naturally has found less favour with the poets than the other seasons. Praise of it has usually a strained air, as though the poet were making the best of a barren theme, like a portrait-painter reluctantly flattering some unattractive sitter. But one poet has seen and seized the mysterious beauty of winter with unforced sympathy—Coventry Patmore, whose "Odes," in particular, containing as they do some of the most rarely spiritual meditation in English poetry, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... place them in definite and comprehensible surroundings. He never left us in doubt either as to the time or the place; and the same obligations of time and place, which Hals never shirked, seem to me to rest on the painter, if he elects to paint his sitter in any attitude ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... correspondent that it is by no means needful to use entirely violet-coloured glass, but the roof thereof exposed to the rays of the sun should be so protected; for although the light is much subdued, and the glare so painful to the eyes of the sitter is taken away, yet but few of the actinic rays are obstructed. It has been proposed to coat the interior with smalt mixed with starch, and afterwards varnished; but this does not appear to have answered. Calico, both white and coloured, has also been used, but it is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 197, August 6, 1853 • Various
... time I found myself seated on a sitter's throne, while Wilkinson stood at his modelling stand working away at a mass of clay that faintly suggested a human ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... renewing his pleasure almost in sight of the cuckold. The fair was no longer coy, and easily yielded to his desires. He in short carried the girl home and then prostituted her to the duke's pleasure, after he had been cloyed himself. The old man going home, and finding his sitter asleep, his wife fled, and his money gone, was thrown into a state of madness, and soon hanged himself. The news was soon spread about the neighbourhood, and reached the inn, where both lovers, now as weary of their purchase as desirous of it before, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... letters tied together with a piece of shoe-thread, and some newspapers and pamphlets scattered about in a manner which showed at a glance that the owner was unaccustomed to their care, but which is yet quite indescribable. On the wall above this table, but within easy reach of the sitter's hand, hung a couple of narrow hanging shelves, on which a few books were neatly arranged. One lay open on the table, with a shoemaker's last placed across ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... hundred. The Rev. John Norton, in his sketch of John Cotton, remarks that "the hen, which brings not forth without uncessant sitting night and day, is an apt emblem of students." Certainly the hen is an apt emblem of the "uncessant" sitter, the credulous scratcher, the fussy cackler ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... expected frequency, and I am willing to assert now that there are no portraits in existence, not in all the history of portrait realization either by the camera or in painting, which so definitely present, and in many instances with an almost haunting clairvoyance, the actualities existing in the sitter's mind and body and soul. These portraits are for me without parallel therefore in this particular. And I make bold with another assertion, that from our modern point of view the Stieglitz photographs ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley |
