"Portraiture" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... plot and artistically 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 ...
— Poetics • Aristotle
... in teat brilliant article in the Monthly Review which first gave to the general public the story of his first season's discoveries, 'were almost as brilliant as when laid down over three thousand years before. For the first time the true portraiture of a man of this mysterious Mycenaean race rises before us. The flesh-tint, following, perhaps, an Egyptian precedent, is of a deep reddish-brown. The limbs are finely moulded, though the waist, as usual in Mycenaean fashions, is tightly drawn in by a silver-mounted ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... said;—the whole family of the plant, in the most superb style of portraiture and presentation. Full size and full colour; one of the most magnificent of such works. Faith had never seen a Rhododendron, and even in her dreams had never visited a wilderness where such flowers grew. Her exquisite delight ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... ordinary interest that we welcome the first installment of a work[C] whose promise—and, we at once cordially add, performance—heralds a really satisfactory account, a realizable flesh-and-blood portraiture, of the English prime minister under whose administration the peace preliminaries of 1782 were signed. The present biographer comes before us with advantages for the treatment of his subject never before possessed. He has enjoyed access not only to his ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... terms with the distinguished people whom he met at his father's table, and was everywhere sought in society, when, at twenty, he began his career by the publication of "Vivian Grey," a novel, unlike anything that had been written, bristling with point and sally, and full of daring portraiture, and which made him ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... S. CURTISS has availed himself well of large opportunities for personal observation, in his volume just published under the title of Western Portraiture, and Emigrant's Guide, a description of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa, with remarks on Minnesota and other territories. It is the most judicious and valuable book of the kind we ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... of my thoughts he had expressed better than I could express them. I am convinced there is nothing new under the sun. Collins has written but little, but he is a most graceful and beautiful creature. For faithfulness of portraiture and bringing out every-day characters, Crabbe is unrivalled in modern days. And Wordsworth—he and Coleridge have been obliged to make minds to understand them. Who equals Wordsworth in purity, in majesty, in tranquil contemplation, in childlikeness? Coleridge is exerting a great influence in ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... developed. Nature has for the most part mingled her inferior and noble elements as she mingles sunshine with shade, giving due influence to both. The truly high and beautiful art of Angelico is continually refreshed and strengthened by his frank portraiture of the most ordinary features of his brother monks, of the recorded peculiarities of ungainly sanctity; but the modern German and Raphaelesque schools lose all honour and nobleness in barber-like admiration of handsome ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... Lockhart wrote to Haydon: "Your approbation of the Life of Scott is valuable, 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 to gratify except, indeed, that I wished and hoped ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... morning all shall bloom again, sir! Whom would you wish them to resemble in feature? I have lately been praised for my skill in portraiture." (Glancing at ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... beauty is so wonderful, that all As willing victims to her mandate fall; In vain do various painters daily vie To limn her rosy cheek, her flashing eye, Her perfect form, and noble, easy grace, Her flowing ebon locks and radiant face. Her charms defy all portraiture: no hand Can reproduce her air of sweet command. Yet e'en such counterfeits, from foreign parts Attract fresh suitors,—win all hearts. But she, whose outward semblance thus appears To be Love's temple, such fierce hatred ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... of the Blood (Vol. iii., p.252.).—In a paraphrase on Ecclesiastes xii. 1-6., entitled, King Solomon's Portraiture of Old Age, by John Smith, M.D., London, 1676, 8vo., 1752, 12mo., the author attributes the discovery of the circulation of the blood to King Solomon. Mede also finds the same anticipation of science in "the pitcher broken at the fountain." Who was the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... pack any three which pleased him. He did so, and drew three knaves, and laid them on the table by the wizard's direction, who then told him, if he desired to see the sum of his bad fortune, to take up those cards. Cuffe, as he was prescribed, took up the first card, and looking on it, he saw the portraiture of himself cap-a-pie, having men encompassing him with bills and halberds. Then he took up the second, and there he saw the judge that sat upon him; and taking up the last card, he saw Tyburn, the place of his execution, and the hangman, at which he laughed heartily. But many years after, being condemned, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... of Barchester, must now be introduced personally to the reader. He is worthy of a new volume, and as he will fill a conspicuous place in it, it is desirable that he should be made to stand before the reader's eye by the aid of such portraiture as the author ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... 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 ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... appear to have had no doubt whatever of the capabilities of the Mound-Builders in the direction of human portraiture. They are not only able to discern in the sculptured heads niceties of expression sufficient for the discrimination of the sexes, but, as well, to enable them to point out such as are undoubtedly ancient and the ...
— Animal Carvings from Mounds of the Mississippi Valley • Henry W. Henshaw
... 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 Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... the young man's eyes and his lips were very firm, but he made no reply. The Man whose portraiture he had beheld that day was a revelation, and he hoped that this divine yet human Friend might make ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Mansoul. And when Emmanuel would expound some of those riddles 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 they sat up over their riddles and nuts and sweetmeats ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... ransacking of the soul, the turning of a man out of himself, the crumbling to pieces of the old man, and the new moulding of it into another shape; it is the turning of stones into children, and a drawing of the lively portraiture of Jesus Christ upon that very table that before represented only the very image of the devil.... Art thou thus changed? Are all old things done away, and all things in thee become new? Hast thou a new heart and renewed affections? And dost thou serve God in newness of life ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... of their abode. They hung side by side, separated by a narrow panel, appearing to eye each other constantly, yet always returning the gaze of the spectator. Travelled gentlemen who professed a knowledge of such subjects reckoned these among the most admirable specimens of modern portraiture, while common observers compared them with the originals, feature by feature, and were rapturous in praise of the likeness. But it was on a third class—neither travelled connoisseurs nor common observers, but people of natural sensibility—that the pictures wrought their ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Mine' Mrs. Helen Hunt Jackson has given us a true classic for the nursery and the school-room, but its readers will not be confined to any locality. Its vivid portraiture of Colorado life and its truth to child-nature give it a charm which the most experienced cannot fail to feel. It will stand by the side of Miss Edgeworth and Mrs. Barbauld in all the years to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Edmund, sought thy sheltering hold, When the proud Dane, fierce Hinguar, in his ire Besieged the king, and wrapped thy walls in fire, While Edmund fled, but left thee with his name Linked, and for ever, to the chain of fame: Then wast thou great! and long, in after years Thy grandeur shone—thy portraiture appears From history's pencil like a summer-night, With much of shadow, but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 575 - 10 Nov 1832 • Various
... dominions, particularly at Poitiers; and, probably, she considered all offences wiped out by so doing: not excepting her criminal project, recorded by Bouchet, of quitting her husband, Louis of France, and "espousing the Sultan Saladin, with whose image and portraiture she had fallen ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... Addison and Bunyan more than for aught else 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
... groan, which burst from the spectators before Whitehall on January 30, 1649, was only representative of the thrill of horror which ran through England and Scotland in the next ten days. This feeling found expression in a book entitled "Eikon Basilike, the portraiture of his sacred majesty in his solitude and sufferings." The book was, it should seem, composed by Dr. Gauden, but professed to be an authentic copy of papers written by the King. It is possible that Gauden may have had in his hands some ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... very 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 followers shed upon the hill crowning Almaville will serve as an exclamation ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... 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 ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... picture which I have drawn of Mr. Adams, I still remain moderately contented—by which remark I mean nothing more egotistical than that I believe it to be a correct picture, and done with whatever measure of skill I may happen to possess in portraiture. I should like to change it only in one particular, viz.: by infusing throughout the volume somewhat more of admiration. Adams has never received the praise which was his due, and probably he never will receive it. In order that justice should be done him by the public, ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... very upper end of this handsome structure I saw the portraiture of two young men standing in a river, the one naked, the other in a livery. The person supported seemed half dead, but still so much alive as to show in his face exquisite joy and love towards the other. I thought the fainting figure resembled my ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... parley as best he may with the Angel who withstands him in the narrow place where there is no way to turn to the right hand or the left. We desire at such times to be shown some such clear portraiture of the ideal to which we must conform in our place and circumstance as shall cause us no more to mistake good for evil. Possibly, if such image of all we ourselves ought to be were given to our gaze, we could not look in its ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... the two customs developed simultaneously, in response to the two-fold desire to preserve both the actual body and a representation of the features of the dead. But I think this suggestion does not give adequate recognition to the fact that the earliest attempts at funerary portraiture were made upon the wrappings of the actual mummies.[36] This fact and the evidence which I have already quoted from Junker make it quite clear that from the beginning the embalmer's aim was to preserve the body and to convert the mummy itself into a simulacrum of the ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... the volumes are worth reading on that account alone. But there is also masterly description of persons, places, and things; skilful analysis of character; a constant play of wit and humour; and a happy gift of instantaneous portraiture." ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... them, your care keeps pace with your admiration; and you cannot feel them crackle beneath your hand without enthusiasm and without regret. He was no pedant—Jemmy Catnach; and the image of his ruffians was commonly as far from portraiture, as his verses were remote from poetry. But he put together in a roughly artistic shape the last murder, robbery, or scandal of the day. His masterpieces were far too popular to live, and if they knew so vast a circulation as 2,500,000 they are hard indeed to come by. ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... otherwise; one saw in them potentialities of heroic passion, and tenderness, and generosity, and, if you will, temper. No, her mouth was not in the least like the pink shoe-button of romance and sugared portraiture; it was manifestly designed less for simpering out of a gilt frame or the dribbling of stock phrases over three hundred pages than for gibes and laughter and cheery gossip and honest, unromantic eating, as well as another purpose, which, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... miniatures, pale and faded—pictures of men and women with the powdered hair of the Georgian period, and the flowing full-bottomed wigs familiar to St. James's and Tunbridge-wells in the days of inoffensive Anne. There were in all seven miniatures, six of which specimens of antique portraiture were prim and starched and artificial of aspect. But the seventh was different in form and style: it was the picture of a girlish face looking out of a frame of loose unpowdered locks; a bright innocent ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... is Mr. Ervine's first novel, his plays depicting Irish characters have been produced with considerable success at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. In "Mrs. Martin's Man" as in his dramas, he gives a faithful portraiture of the simple ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... at present limited) is that they are far superior to glass for all purposes except portraiture of the human form or instantaneous pictures where extreme rapidity is necessary, but for all ordinary cases of rapid exposure they are sufficiently quick. The first advantage, which I soon discovered, is their entire freedom from halation. This, with glass plates, is ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... of that estrangement 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 two appurtenances which would ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... or, indeed, for that matter, to its simple intensity and fecundity. No romancer has created a greater number of the figures that breathe and move and speak, in their habits as they might have lived; none, on the whole, seems to us to have had such a masterly touch in portraiture, none has mingled so much ideal beauty with so much unsparing reality. His sadness has its element of error, but it has also its larger element of wisdom. Life is, in fact, a battle. On this point optimists ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... afterwards the Melvilles paid him another visit, in Edinburgh, the account of which by the younger is one of the loci classici of Scottish history. It contains, like the same writer's description of the last appearance of Knox in the pulpit, one of the most living pieces of portraiture in our literature: 'When we cam to his chalmer, we fand him sitting in his chaire, teatching his young man that servit him in his chalmer a, b, ab; e, b, eb, etc. Efter salutation, Mr. Andro sayes, "I sie, ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... cogitation and spontaneous fancy. They become naturalised in the mind. The poet cuts loose from nature and works out instead whatever hints of human character or romantic story the myth already supplies. Analogies drawn from moral and passionate experience replace the further portraiture of outer facts. Human tastes, habits, and dreams enter the fable, expanding it into some little drama, or some mystic anagram of mortal life. While in the beginning the sacred poet had transcribed nothing but joyous perceptions and familiar industrial or martial ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... plain "stuffed." It was claimed for this that "each order would be distinct, and 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 ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... than 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 ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... general and a 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 we ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... 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 the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Perhaps it may be an instance of this that we find more prominence given to our Lord's touch as connected with His miracles than in the other Gospels, or perhaps it may merely be an instance of the vivid portraiture, the result of a keen eye for externals, which is so marked a characteristic of this gospel. Whatever the reason, the fact is plain, that Mark delights to dwell on Christ's touch. The instances are these—first, He puts out His hand, and 'lifts up' Peter's wife's mother, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... the style, though softened, was still chaste, and though tender, self-restrained. At last came the period of license: the artist chose his subjects from the lowest scenes of human life, and let loose his passions in their portraiture. And the kingdom ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... my chamber. This had probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. The falling of other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the ammonia from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... 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 ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... before him. He saw a joyous child, a light-hearted boy, and a sanguine youth, with the shifting and familiar scenery of well-remembered experience. Time softened the pictures, and the harsh, rough outlines which exist in every truthful portraiture of life were lost in the haze of distance. The gentle but steady light of mother love, and through her a pale, half-recognized reflection of the love of God, illumined all those years; and his father's strong, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... naught in malice. Up to this moment I have never inquired of myself whether to those who have known little or nothing of Rossetti hitherto, mine will seem to be on the whole favourable or unfavourable portraiture; but I have trusted my admiration of the poet and affection for the friend to penetrate with kindly and appreciative feeling every comment I have had to offer. I was attracted to Rossetti in the first case by ardent ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... personal sense, in a published book. Perhaps therefore we shall be safest in supposing that he alludes, not to persons who are dear, but to circumstances and conditions of a more general kind—such as are involved in his self-portraiture, ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... surpassed 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... with the hot pained affection which makes the high mountains of the world sink for the time to a species of mole-hillock. She danced through his dreams and usurped all the paths of his ambition. Formerly he had thought of himself—for the man was given to self-portraiture—as the adventurer, the scorner of the domestic; now he struggled to regain the old attitude, but he struggled in vain. The ways were blocked, a slim figure was ever in view, and lo! when he blotted it from his sight the world was dark and the roads blind. For a moment he had lost his bearings ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... suggestion is a summoning into ascendancy of the true man; an accentuation of insight into life and its procedures; a revealing, in all its beauty and strength and significance, of absolute, universal, and necessary truth; and a portraiture of happiness as the assured outcome of living in consonance with this truth." The learned doctor regards hypnotism, indeed, ...
— The Life Radiant • Lilian Whiting
... rough, their sides under their wings better covered with thick down (wherewith also their gorge or a part of their breast under their throats is armed, and not with feathers) than are the like parts of the eagle, and unto which portraiture there is no member of the raven (who is almost black of colour) that can have any resemblance: we have none of them in England to my knowledge; if we have, they go generally under the name of eagle or erne. Neither have we the pygargus or grip, wherefore I have no occasion to treat further. I have ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... just drawn is only a fuller portraiture of the youth whose outlines have been already sketched by the companions of his earlier years. If his hero says, "I breakfasted with a pen behind my ear and dined in company with a folio bigger than the table," one of his family says of the boy Motley that "if there ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... intense interest in which he has held us by the vivid reality of his narrative, and have begun to search for faults in cold blood, that we are able to find them, In the Last of the Mohicans, we have a bolder portraiture of. ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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 have to ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... out in eloquence The portraiture of Humber and his son, As fortunate as was Policrates; Yet should they not escape our conquering swords, Or boast of ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... biography cannot be written except by a man who can comprehend his subject and take a wide view of his position among men, sorting what is trivial from what is essential, what is common to all men from what is particular to the subject of his work. And it is very much the same in portraiture. It is only the painter who possesses the intuitive faculty for seizing on the significant things in the form expression of his subject, of disentangling what is trivial from what is important; and who can convey this forcibly to the beholder on his canvas, more forcibly ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... boundless capacity for improvement that exists in the human mind and human taste, from the spread of the fine arts among the people. Thirty years ago, their houses, if having any decoration at all, exhibited those fearful and wonderful colored lithographs and chromos in which bad drawing, bad portraiture, and bad coloring vied with each other to produce pictures which it would be a mild use of terms to call detestable. Then came the two great international art expositions at Philadelphia and Chicago, each ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... seen that I have reserved Old Fortunatus and The Honest Whore for separate notice. They illustrate, respectively, the power which Dekker has in romantic poetry, and his command of vivid, tender, and subtle portraiture in the characters, especially, of women. Both, and especially the earlier play, exhibit also his rapid careless writing, and his ignorance of, or indifference to, the construction of a clear and distinctly outlined plot. Old Fortunatus tells the well-known story of the ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... pleasant; 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 her own rested afresh on several finished ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... his favorite minister to the envoy. Montigny, although somewhat influenced by the King's hypocritical assurances of the, benignity with which he regarded the Netherlands, was, nevertheless, not to be deceived by this flattering portraiture of a man whom he knew so well and detested so cordially as he did Granvelle. Solicited by the King, at their parting interview, to express his candid opinion as to the causes of the dissatisfaction in the provinces, Montigny very frankly and most imprudently gave vent to his private ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... 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
... 'lifting up his protestation' in troublous times, 'that the Lord has fashioned His Kirk by the uncounterfeited work of His own new creation; or, as the prophet speaketh, "hath made us, and not we ourselves;" and that we must not presume to fashion a new portraiture of a Kirk, and a new form of divine service, which God in His word hath not before allowed; seeing that, were we to extend our authority further than the calling we have of God doth permit—as, namely, if we should (as God forbid!) ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... and has stuck close to the brisk narrative and pithy descriptions of Chaucer. If the subject in hand be concrete description, as in the Temple of Mars, Dryden is at his best, and surpasses his original; but if the abstract enters, as in the portraiture on the walls, he expands, and when he expands he ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... the place to speak of Greek portraits, if space allowed it. I will only point out the erroneousness of the popular view, that Greek portraits were conventional and uninteresting; and that it was the Romans who introduced individuality into portraiture. It is strange that a view which is utterly false should have gained such currency. It is true that Greek portraits of the fifth and even the fourth century have in them much of the type, and individual traits are softened in accord with ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... for the unattainable are admirably relieved, as in "Eugenie Grandet" and "Old Goriot," by a certain nobility and purity of motive. The novel is generally acknowledged one of Balzac's masterpieces, both in vigour of portraiture and minuteness of detail. Perhaps no one was ever better fitted to depict the ruin wrought by a fixed idea than Balzac himself, who wasted much of his laborious life in struggling to discover ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... fellow's face 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which naturally stimulates her most to artistic effort is the portraiture of her fondly-loved husband. His memory, although he has been dead eleven years, is so fresh in her mind, her eye is so capable of recalling his image, and her hand is so well trained to follow her impressions, and to reproduce ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... doing it forever, in the strains of the bard. Art is thus the mirror of life and of institutions; it reflects the grand conflict of the times and the people; it seizes upon the supreme national event, and holds it up in living portraiture ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... by her successor, James I., in honour of Queen Elizabeth. The white marble effigy rests under a heavy canopy; the face was moulded from a mask taken of the features after death and is therefore a likeness, but those who desire to see a more realistic portraiture of the great Tudor sovereign in her old age should visit the Islip Chapel, where is her wax figure. The touching Latin inscription, thus translated, "Consorts both in throne and grave, here rest we two sisters, Elizabeth and Mary, in hope of one resurrection," ...
— Westminster Abbey • Mrs. A. Murray Smith
... long defied his principal, could not but have made some impression on the minds of bishop, dean, prebends, and other magnates of the cathedral, and hence, as we may suppose, the erection of this lively portraiture of the old man, which is believed to have been only once renewed since it was first put up. Dr. Dibdin, who last copied it, tells us that 'old Scarlett's jacket and trunkhose are of a brownish red, his stockings blue, his shoes ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... gives, preceded by two verses, inculcating the right acceptance of God's chastisements which are one chief means of attaining Wisdom, and followed by two verses (vers. 19, 20), which exalt her as being divine as well as human. So the portraiture of her working in humanity is framed by a prologue and epilogue, setting forth two aspects of her relation to God; namely, that she is imparted by Him through the discipline of trouble, and that she dwells in His bosom and is the agent of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... there are any 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 ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... for portraiture because he is a fairly typical specimen of a bad—a very bad—set. When the history of our decline and fall comes to be Written by some Australian Gibbon, the historian may choose the British bully and turfite to set alongside of the awful creatures ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... Portraiture was not Jolyon's forte, but he had already drawn his younger daughter three times, and was drawing her a fourth, on the afternoon of October 4th, 1899, when a card was brought to him which caused his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... tales are essentially for children, but would fascinate older and less enthusiastic minds with their delicate romance and the admirable portraiture of the hard life ...
— Tales of Daring and Danger • George Alfred Henty
... most polished gold. It is a delightful book, with one scene in it, the memorable night at sea, worth scores of customary novels, and, apart from the noble and beautiful delineation of David Dodd, would be invaluable for nothing else but its faultless portraiture of that ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... this statement, the Pearl Empress was submerged in bewilderment, knowing that the Lady A-Kuei had modestly retired when the artist had depicted the reflection of the assembled loveliness of the Inner Chambers, as not counting herself worthy of portraiture, and her features were therefore unknown to him. Nor could the Empress further question the artist, for when she had done ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... of this metaphor, it is unnatural and almost impossible to deny its presence in this psalm. In a former sermon I have directed attention to the earlier portion of it, which presents us, in its portraiture of the King, a shadowy and prophetic outline of Jesus Christ. I desire, in a similar fashion, to deal now with the latter portion, which, in its portrait of the bride, presents us with truths having their real fulfilment in the Church collectively ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Terouenne and Tournay. A private plate of Sir Anthony exists, the original portrait from which it was taken being at Letheringham at the time the engraving was made. The position of the hand in the girdle only indicates the fashion of portraiture at the time, and is akin to the frequent custom of placing one arm ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various
... picture, in The Open Question, of a Southern family impoverished by the war, is exceedingly vivid and bears all the marks of the utmost fidelity. Nor must I omit to mention that the stage has borne a modest but not insignificant part in this movement of national self-portraiture. Mr. Augustus Thomas' Alabama is a delightful picture of Southern life, while Mr. James A. Herne's Shore Acres takes a distinct place in the literature of New England, his Griffith Davenport[P] in the ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... one. The face itself is taken from some model, which could be idealised to suit a definite conception, and in which the pure and symmetrical lines are harmonised with admirable feeling. Every feature is made to correspond, interrelated by some secret necessary to the art of portraiture. The broad brow and the calm eyes looking upwards are in relation with the delicately chiselled nose and mouth, while the right hand, which is outstretched in giving the blessing, is rendered with infinite sentiment and grace. St. Louis, in short, deserves high ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... statistics with such lightness of touch as to make them seem a stirring narrative. His other books, "An American Four-in-Hand in Britain" and "Round the World" present the vivid impressions of a keen traveler. His "Life of James Watt" conveys a sympathetic portraiture of the inventor of the steam engine. His "Gospel of Wealth" is a piece of deep-thinking discursiveness, although it really seems a superfluous thesis, for Mr. Carnegie's best exposition of the gospel of wealth unfolds itself in two thousand ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... sudden mood, for many a day, From all communion he would start away: And then, his rarely called attendants said, Through night's long hours would sound his hurried tread O'er the dark gallery, where his fathers frowned In rude but antique portraiture around: They heard, but whispered—"that must not be known— The sound of words less earthly than his own.[jj] 140 Yes, they who chose might smile, but some had seen They scarce knew what, but more than should have been. Why gazed he so upon the ghastly head[270] Which hands profane had gathered ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... the rule of life, as the modern philosopher had said. On the one side were the many dying of want, on the other side the few occupied with poetry and art, writing addresses to flowers, and peddling—in the portraiture of the moods and methods of love, living lives of frivolity, taking pleasure in mere riches and the lusts of the eye, while thousands of wretched mortals were grovelling in the mire.... Then where was our refuge? ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... 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,' pressing ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... over by a judicial magistrate. This distinguished functionary, the judicial magistrate, who generally hears the appeals from Fetter's court, is a man of the name of Fairweather Fuddle, a clever wag, whose great good-nature is only equalled by the rotundity of his person, which is not a bad portraiture of our much-abused Sir John Falstaff, as represented by the heavy men of our country theatres. Now, to enter upon an analysis of the vast difference between Fetter's court in ordinary, and Fuddle's court in judiciary, would ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... that I shouldn't be there to put him through. I found myself abruptly called to Germany by the alarming illness of my younger brother, who, against my advice, had gone to Munich to study, at the feet indeed of a great master, the art of portraiture in oils. The near relative who made him an allowance had threatened to withdraw it if he should, under specious pretexts, turn for superior truth to Paris—Paris being somehow, for a Cheltenham aunt, the school of evil, ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... and fascinates our attention by an intense power of realism which carries us with unreasoning haste from cover to cover of his works, Le Fanu is an idealist, full of high imagination, and an artist who devotes deep attention to the most delicate detail in his portraiture of men and women, and his descriptions of the outdoor and indoor worlds—a writer, therefore, through whose pages it would be often an indignity to hasten. And this more leisurely, and certainly more classical, conduct of his stories makes us remember them ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... consisted neither of the water-colour studies of the children nor of 'goody' 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 he buttoned ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Karenina; and I turn to it now, not for its beauty and harmony, not because it is one of the most exquisitely toned, shaded, gradated pieces of portraiture in fiction, but because it happens to show very clearly how an effect may be lost for want of timely precaution. Tolstoy undoubtedly damaged a magnificent book by his refusal to linger over any kind of pictorial introduction. There is none ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... 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 ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... teens, posterity will revert to our delineation of the heavy swell with pleasure undiminished, through the long succession of ages yet to come; the macaroni, the fop, the dandy, will be forgotten, or remembered only in our graphic portraiture of the heavy swell. But the heavy swell is, after all, a harmless nobody. His curse, his besetting sin, his monomania, is vanity tinctured with pride: his weak point can hardly be called a crime, since it affects and injures nobody but himself, if, indeed, it can be said to injure ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... Homer he is a universalized Agamemnon, with very much the intellectual and moral qualities of Agamemnon; a process of growth in the conception of him in the Homeric poems is indicated by the incongruities in his portraiture—at one time he is a creature of impulse and passion, at another time a dignified and thoughtful ruler. In Pindar and the tragedians of the fifth century he has become the representative of justice and order in the world, and in later writers ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... falling within the category here contemplated, although that they are material accessions to our resources is undoubted. They are the fruit of a combination between nature and mechanical science; their fidelity for portraiture and technical purposes may be granted; but they do not realise the notion of artistic embellishment or interpretation, nor are they capable of rendering with anything approaching truth the more delicate and subtle touches of ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... usual expectancy. Whenever as now an unforeseen delay occurred, he was always prompt to take advantage of the interval with a brief talk. To them there were never enough of these brief talks, which invariably drew human life into relationship to the art of portraiture, and set the one reality over against the other reality—the turbulence of a human life and the still image of it on the canvas. They hoped he would thus talk to them now; in truth he had the air of casting about in his mind for a theme best suited ...
— A Cathedral Singer • James Lane Allen
... justice exercised upon the Tartuffe of sentiment, Joseph, is another service to the cause of morals, which should more than atone for any dangerous embellishment of wrong that the portraiture of the younger brother may exhibit. Indeed, though both these characters are such as the moralist must visit with his censure, there can be little doubt to which we should, in real life, give the preference;—the levities and errors of the one, arising from warmth of heart and ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... little as he in assuming the author. His books are his observations reduced to writing. It seems to us as singular to demand that Dante should be like Shakespeare as to quarrel with Thackeray's want of what is called ideal portraiture. Even if you thought, from reading his Vanity Fair, that he had no conception of noble women, certainly after the lecture upon Swift, after all the lectures, in which every allusion to women was so manly and delicate and sympathetic, ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... any discomfort in these limitations of our capacity. We can do much that others cannot, and more than we have ever yet ourselves completely done. Our first great gift is in the portraiture of living people—a power already so accomplished in both Reynolds and Gainsborough, that nothing is left for future masters but to add the calm of perfect workmanship to their vigour and felicity of perception. And of ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... assume an exaggerated and gigantic outline, half lost amid the clouds,—so now, through the obscurity of fable, we descry the dim and mighty outline of the HEROIC AGE. The careful and skeptical Thucydides has left us, in the commencement of his immortal history, a masterly portraiture of the manners of those times in which individual prowess elevates the possessor to the rank of a demigod; times of unsettled law and indistinct control;—of adventure—of excitement;—of daring qualities ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... cried the editor, scratching the tip of his nose, where he had somehow caught a spot of ink. "Bald facts; honest portraiture. ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... The second love deceived him in the same way, preferring a Count to a genius. And his third love, George Sand, after apparently reciprocating his attachment, for a few years, not only discarded him, but tried to justify her conduct to the world, by giving an exaggerated portraiture of his weaknesses, in her ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... plays will admit all I have urged about the likeness of Romeo and Jaques to Hamlet without concluding that these preliminary studies, so to speak, for the great portrait render it at all certain that the masterpiece of portraiture is a likeness of Shakespeare himself. The impartial critic will probably say, "You have raised a suspicion in my mind; a strong suspicion it may be, but still a suspicion that is far from certitude." Fortunately the evidence still to be offered is a thousand times more convincing than ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... a Catholic money-lender that when about to cheat, he was wont to draw a veil over the face of his favourite saint. Thus the portraiture of a great and virtuous man is in some measure a companionship of something better than ourselves; and though we may not reach the standard of the hero, we may to a certain extent be influenced by his likeness on ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... had an impression that her grandmother's art of portraiture would have been more-successful with the profile than the "full-face." Nevertheless, nothing could be more clearly indicated than that the hair of M. Melihac was very yellow, and his short, huge-lapelled waistcoat white, striped with scarlet. An enormous cravat covered ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... days bought a picture, unless it happened to be his own portrait. There was some demand for portrait painting—that paid—especially if you, the painter, were nearly at the head of your profession. Poor Wilson had given up portraiture, and soon found himself painting landscapes, and starving the while. So Runciman also discovered quickly enough—and with characteristic un-reason abandoned landscapes and took to historical art, which, being in much less request even than landscape ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... of the Punjab during its last few years of independence, the description of the battles on the Sutlej, and the portraiture generally of native character, seem admirably true.... On the whole, we have never read a more vivid and faithful narrative of military ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... real life, portraits of those who are honestly beautiful; or expressive of innocence, happiness, benevolence, or intellectuality, but not of gluttony, wantonness, anger, hatred, or malevolence, unless in some cases of justifiable satire—of histrionic or historic portraiture—landscape—natural phenomena—animals, not indiscriminately—in some cases, grand or beautiful buildings, even without figures—any scene on sea or land which induces reflection—all subjects from such parts ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... first who made any considerable advances in the execution of statues. Those which remain are rude, simple, uniform, without beauty or grace (except a certain serenity of facial expression which seems to pervade all their portraiture), but colossal and grand. Nearly two thousand years before Christ the walls of Thebes were ornamented with sculptured figures, even as the gates of Babylon were made of sculptured bronze. The dimensions of Egyptian colossal figures ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... figure! Her skin of whiteness endarketh the snow, With rose-colour ennewed.[38] I thee ensure Her little hands in mean[39] manner—this no trow[4]— Her fingers small and long, with nails ruddy: most pure Of proportion, none such in portraiture: Without peer: worthy to have for fairness The apple that Paris gave Venus the goodness. SEM. Sir, have ye all done? CAL. Yea, marry, what then? SEM. I put case all this ye have said be true; Yet are ye more noble, sith ye be a man. CAL. Wherein? ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Volume I. • R. Dodsley
... with modern taste, which generally eschews all attempt to embody the mind's conceptions of the Supreme Being; but Blake was far more closely allied to the ancient than to the modern world. His portraiture and poetry often remind us of the childlike familiarity—not rude in him, but utterly reverent—which was frequently, and sometimes offensively, displayed in the old miracle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... a highly interesting book, not only as a portraiture of the domestic life of Jefferson, but as a side view of the parties and politics of the day, witnessed in our country seventy years ago. The correspondence of the public characters at that period will be read with special interest by those who study the ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous
... well-known to all the world occur in these pages, this book does not present a picture of public or private individuals living or dead. It is not in any sense a historical novel. It is in conception and portraiture ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... 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
... of Wallenstein is an introduction to the celebrated tragedy of that name; and, by its vivid portraiture of the state of the general's army, gives the best clue to the spell of his gigantic power. The blind belief entertained in the unfailing success of his arms, and in the supernatural agencies by which that success is secured to him; the unrestrained indulgence ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... staunch Tory. Yet, though he differed so essentially from the divine poet, he understood the greatness of Shelley at a glance, and preserved for us a record of his friend's early days, which is incomparable for the vividness of its portraiture. The pages which narrate Shelley's course of life at Oxford have all the charm of a romance. No novel indeed is half so delightful as that picture, at once affectionate and satirical, tender and ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... strange mysterious Dream Wave with his Wings in airy Stream, Of lively Portraiture displaid, Softly on my Eyelids laid; And as I wake, sweet Musick breathe Above, about, or underneath, Sent by Spirits to Mortals Good, Or th' unseen ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... gigantic frame; all this seems never to have been seen, much less drawn, until Lewis drew and himself engraved a series of animal subjects, now many years ago. Since then, he has devoted himself to the portraiture of those European and Asiatic races, among whom the refinements of civilization exist without its laws or its energies, and in whom the fierceness, indolence, and subtlety of animal nature are associated with brilliant imagination and strong affections. To this task he has brought ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... alone to 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 ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and England," says Mr. Ruskin,[6] "painted with absolute fidelity by Scott and Wordsworth,—(for leading types out of this exhaustless portraiture, I may name Dandie Dinmont, and Michael,) are hitherto a scarcely injured race; whose strength and virtue yet survive to represent the body and soul of England, before her days of mechanical decrepitude, and commercial dishonour. There are men working in my own fields who might have fought with ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... had been examining 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 ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... not therefore uncreative. In its own sphere of everyday life, it was an epoch of growth in many directions. Even the arts moved forward. Sculpture was enriched by a new and noble style of portraiture. Architecture won new possibilities by the engineering genius which reared the aqueduct of Segovia and the Basilica of Maxentius.[1] But these are only practical expansions of arts that are in themselves unpractical. ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield
... however, pretend that historical portraiture was the motive of a play that will leave the reader as ignorant of Russian history as he may be now before he has turned the page. Nor is the sketch of Catherine complete even idiosyncratically, leaving her politics ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... marvelous portraiture of the social life of his time has casually handed down to us invaluable facts about vocal and instrumental music. There is no question that Ambros is fully justified in his conclusion that the cantori a liuto were a well-marked class ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... feelings and to certain other considerations, warrants) will be found a complete history, from the pen of the poet himself, of the course of his life and thoughts, during this most energetic period of his whole career;—presenting altogether so wide a canvass of animated and, often, unconscious self-portraiture, as even the communicative spirit of genius has seldom, if ever, before ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... been "over head and ears" in love. Now, it is a matter of fact, that the latter look upon their Lucys, or Amys, or Dianas (for the time being) as considerably excelling any of those with whose verbal portraiture they are familiar. Need I say that I formed any exception? On that moonlight night, as I parted from her, I felt satisfied that there was no more lovely person in the world than ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... Clerk of Session, a nephew of Adam Rolland of Gask, who was in some respects the prototype of Pleydell, and whose face and figure have been made familiar to the present generation by Raeburn's masterpiece of portraiture, now in the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... the Germans, Cranach, Duerer and Holbein were profoundly affected by Italy. Of them all Holbein [Sidenote: Hans Holbein the Younger, 1497-1543] was the only one who could really compete with the Italians on their own ground, and that only in one branch of art, portraiture. His studies of Henry VIII, and of his wives and courtiers, combine truth to nature with a high sense of beauty. His paintings of More and Erasmus express with perfect mastery the finest ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... Yeats, whose main work has been in portraiture, must often find himself before sitters with whom he has little sympathy, and we all expect to find portraits which do not interest us, because the interpreter has been at fault, and has failed in his vision. ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... his pen. He has commenced the publication in one of the journals of a new romance, called La bonne Aventure. From a few chapters, it is evident that it will possess the enthralling interest of most of his works, and will display his varied and vast talent in the portraiture of character and the invention of incident. He is as intent as ever Mr. Cooper was, upon making the novel a teacher and ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... novel, and still less a serious biography, though it is founded on the real history of a notorious highway robber and thief. The author disclaimed in his preface any attempt on his part at authentic history or faithful portraiture. "Roguery, and not a rogue is my subject," he wrote; adding, that the ideas of goodness and greatness are too often confounded together. "A man may be great without being good, or good without being great." The story of "Jonathan Wild" is really a bitter, satirical ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... I've seen your photograph," he resumed; "and I don't much approve of it, now I see You. My sentiments are not altogether favourable to that art. I delivered a lecture on photographic portraiture at Coolspring; and I described it briefly as justice without mercy. The audience took the idea; they larfed, they did. Larfin' reminds me of Amelius. Do you object to his being a Christian ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... idiom, characterises Mr. LAWRENCE'S method. It is a realism not of minutely recorded outward happenings, trivial or exciting, but of fiercely contested agonies of the spirit. None of those stories is a story in the accepted mode. They are studies in (dare one use the overworked word?) psychological portraiture. I don't know any other writer who realises passion and suffering with such objective force. The word "suffering" drops from his pen in curiously unexpected contexts. The fact of it seems to obsess him. Yet it is no morbid obsession. ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... within him at the parade and hollowness which he detected in aristocratic and bureaucratic Madrid. One conceives that, like his own Raimundo, he was invited to enter it, took his fill of its pleasures, and found his mouth filled with ashes. His talent for portraiture was never better employed. If he was occasionally tempted to commit the peculiarly Spanish fault of exaggeration—scarcely a fault there, where the shadows are so black and the colours so flaring—he resisted it in his more important characters. The brutality ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... that of "The Sprightly Rabbit," but it is not impossible that some may recognise, under his disguise, "Felix," the ruffianly but accomplished host, who was the model for the sketch upon page 43, one of the happiest examples in the present volume of the artist's skill in portraiture, as well as of his rare technique in pen-and-ink. Equally happy is the sketch which depicts "'Chacun' with his 'Chacune'" at the Moulin de la Galette (page 13), in which the pose of the figures and the expression upon ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson
... their structure afforded one both pleasure and surprise; for upon many of them were laid carpets of gold. There was also wrought gold and ivory fastened about them all; and many resemblances of the war, and those in several ways, and variety of contrivances, affording a most lively portraiture of itself. For there was to be seen a happy country laid waste, and entire squadrons of enemies slain; while some of them ran away, and some were carried into captivity; with walls of great altitude ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... the eighteenth century, and his moralizing, unlike theirs, is unconscious and indirect. The same poetical feeling is shown in his biographies; his subject is invariably chosen for its picturesqueness, and whatever is unessential to portraiture is thrown into the background. The result is that his biographies, however deficient in research, bear the stamp of genuine artistic intelligence, equally remote from compilation and disquisition. In execution they are almost faultless; ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... pedagogus, or a "boy-leader" (whence our word pedagogue), he daily went with his brothers to school through the streets of Rome, we do not know. He may have been a severe Orbilius, or he may have been one of those noble-minded tutors whose ideal portraiture is drawn in such beautiful colours by the learned and amiable Quintilian. Seneca has not alluded to any one who taught him during his early days. The only schoolfellow whom he mentions by name in his voluminous writings is a certain Claranus, a deformed boy, whom, after leaving school, ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... more essentially true is it, in reference to the ethereal spirits, endowed by the Supreme with a lavish portion of intellectual strength, as well as with proportionate capacities for doing good? How serious therefore is the obligation to fidelity, when the portraiture of a man is to be presented, like Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in whom such diversified and contrary qualities alternately predominated! Yet all the advantages to be derived from him, and similar instructors ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... on the point; and I had already written to the office to say so. But I do not believe for a moment that Pugh means any such thing; I regarded him as a strong Wellsian and even more of an admirer than myself; though he might be so modern as to use a familiar and mixed method of portraiture, which is too modern for my tastes, but which many use besides he. For the moment I suggest a possible misunderstanding, which he may well correct by a further explanation. I had said something myself in my weekly article, demurring to ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... decrepit child, the sole fruit of a sad marriage. Destined from its birth, to an early grave, its excitable imagination soon consumes its frail body. Nothing could be more exquisitely tender, more true to nature, than the portraiture of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Ibsen gently but firmly declined the proffered inheritance; but Holm's will no doubt suggested to him the figure of that red-haired "Mademoiselle Diana," who is heard of but not seen in Hedda Gabler, and enabled him to add some further traits to the portraiture of Lovborg. When the play appeared, Holm recognised himself with glee in the character of the bibulous man of letters, and thereafter adopted "Eilert Lovborg" as his pseudonym. I do not, therefore, ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... 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, your ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of Fame 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, for the god of the dead. The ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... marked by Mino's profound refinement. The Madonna and Child in No. 232 are peculiarly beautiful and notable both for high relief and shallow relief, and the Child in No. 193 is even more charming. For delicacy and vivacity in marble portraiture it would be impossible to surpass the head of Rinaldo della Luna; and the two Medicis are wonderfully real. Everything in Mino's work is thoughtful and exquisite, while the unusual type of face which so attracted him gives ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... Son's counsel, with Luise in the little village of Leonberg, near to Solituede, where an arrangement had been made for her. Here a certain Herr Roos, a native of Wuertemberg, had made some acquaintance with her, in the winter 1797-8; to whom we owe the following sketch of portraiture. "She was a still-agreeable old person of sixty-five or six, whose lean wrinkly face still bespoke cheerfulness and kindliness. Her thin hair was all gray; she was of short" (middle) "stature, and her attitude slightly stooping; she had a pleasant tone of voice; ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... repulsive 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the following portraiture of this great model of an eremitical life:[5] St. Paul, the hermit, not being called by God to the external duties of an active life, remained alone, conversing only with God, in a vast wilderness, for the space of near a hundred years, ignorant of all that passed in the world, ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... illuminated into more appreciable effect. The tapestry is wrought with figures in the dress of Henry VI.'s time (which is the date of the hall), and is regarded by antiquaries as authentic evidence both for the costume of that epoch, and, I believe, for the actual portraiture of men known in history. They are as colorless as ghosts, however, and vanish drearily into the old stitch-work of their substance when you try to make them out. Coats-of-arms were formerly emblazoned all round the hall, but have been almost rubbed ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... In interpreting this portraiture of one great poet by another it will be of interest to glance at the actual facts as far as they are known in regard to the relations which existed between Shakespeare and Jonson. Praise and blame both are recorded on Jonson's part when writing of Shakespeare, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke |
