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Portraiture   Listen
noun
Portraiture  n.  
1.
A portrait; a likeness; a painted resemblance; hence, that which is copied from some example or model. "For, by the image of my cause, I see The portraiture of his." "Divinity maketh the love of ourselves the pattern; the love of our neighbors but the portraiture."
2.
Pictures, collectively; painting. (Obs.)
3.
The art or practice of making portraits.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Portraiture" Quotes from Famous Books



... the highest art. But the heroine of Manipur is unmistakably artless. She is content to jot down, as if she were writing a letter home, her impressions of what she sees, and her account of what passes before her eyes. She has the gift of reproducing with a few strokes of the pen, portraiture of anything that has struck her. The only thing missed is detailed report of her own brave bearing through the fearful night when the Residency was attacked, and during the dreadful days that followed on the flight towards Cachar. No one reading Mrs. GRIMWOOD's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 28, 1891 • Various

... only in Zela's absence that I could dwell on her portraiture. She had just turned her fourteenth year; and though certainly not considered, even in the east, as matured, yet, forced like a flower, fanned by the sultry west wind, into early developement, her form, like its petals bursting through the bud, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, No. - 537, March 10, 1832 • Various

... before it, for it created something like the uproar that Manet's "Olympia" had raised in its time. Peter learned from one critic that his technique was magnificent, his picture a masterpiece of psychology and of portraiture, and that if he kept on he'd soon be one of the Immortals. He learned from another that while he undoubtedly had technique, his posing was commonplace, his subject banal, his imagination hopelessly bourgeois; that he was a painter ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... OF HENRY CLAY. An impartial biography, presenting, by bold and simple strokes of the historic pencil, a portraiture of the illustrious theme which no one should fail to read, and no library be without. By SAMUEL M. SCHMUCKER, LL. D. With Portrait ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings

... faith in malt, she wins a deserved happiness with someone that she had never even thought of pursuing. Mr. HALIFAX gives me an impression of almost cinematographic and gramophonic exactness in his portraiture. George Shadd, Ruth's father, who worked in the gasworks and was one of the very best, delighted me particularly, with his pathetic little garden, his battle with the slugs and black-fly, and his fine patience ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James

... that in all probability already in the course of the sixth century a national Roman comedy (-togata-) was added to the Graeco-Roman (-palliata-), as a portraiture not of the distinctive life of the capital, but of the ways and doings of the Latin land. Of course the Terentian school rapidly took possession of this species of comedy also; it was quite in accordance with its spirit to ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... nature, as the sole ground and efficient cause not only of all things, events, and appearances, but likewise of all our thoughts, sensations, impulses, and actions. Obedience to nature is the only virtue." It is possible that Byron traced his own lineaments in this too life-like portraiture, and at the same time conceived the possibility of a new Don Juan, "made up" after his own likeness. His extreme resentment at Coleridge's just, though unwise and uncalled-for, attack on Maturin stands in need of some explanation. See letter to Murray, September 17, 1817 (Letters, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... delightful work pronounces with unfaltering dogmatism judgments founded on canons of criticism which were accepted in the then expiring age of Augustan literature. His Life by his satellite Boswell holds the first place among biographies as a triumph of portraiture. The new interest in antiquity was fostered by the rise of English historical writing. In the earliest years of the reign Hume completed his History of England, which, though no longer regarded as of scientific importance, ...
— The Political History of England - Vol. X. • William Hunt

... Hon. Bardwell Slote, of Cohosh, is not in any way overdrawn. It is, in fact, conservative, If an exact portraiture of him were given, the ICONOCLAST would be unmailable. There are some men in the American House of Representatives who are ornaments to the Republic. They are honest, patriotic and intelligent. But they are woefully few. Slote may stand for ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... consistent literary portraiture. He is generally understood to have been a study from life. But as the official whose name has sometimes been associated with the character was a considerably more humane disciplinarian than the persecutor of Rufus ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... has accomplished her task with rare feminine appreciation and sympathy, with a clear and decisive interest, with a catholicity of judgment and a fine sense of discrimination and proportion and with a warmth and delicacy of treatment that transform these biographical sketches into little gems of portraiture.—The Commercial Advertiser, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... they have never done so. I do not think the objection is a natural conservatism, or dislike of doing something to which one is unaccustomed. The ill omen does not appear to have been feared for the young as well as for the old, even in provincial localities, when for the first time portraiture by daguerreotypy or more recently by photography was introduced. It has long been known that among primitive peoples there is a decided prejudice against portraiture. The notion seems to be that the individual may lose his ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... Melville portrait of Mary, young and charming, and wearing jewels which are found recorded in her Inventories, has hitherto been overlooked. An admirable photogravure is given in Mr. J. J. Foster's "True Portraiture of Mary, Queen of Scots" (1905), and I understand that a photograph was done in 1866 for the ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang

... here of that compression which is the note of a really sovereign style. It is unfair, perhaps, to set a not remarkable passage from Lord Lytton side by side with one of the signal masterpieces of another, and a very perfect poet; and yet it is interesting, when we see how the portraiture of a dog, detailed through thirty odd lines, is frittered down and finally almost lost in the mere laxity of the style, to compare it with the clear, simple, vigorous delineation that Burns, in four couplets, has given us of the ploughman's collie. It is interesting, at first, and then ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... to descant upon literature, and suffered him without protest to deliver himself on certain social topics, which he treated with extraordinary humor and with constant revelations of that power of ironical portraiture of which his books are full. He had a great deal to say about London, as London appears to the observer who does n't fear the accusation of cynicism, during the high-pressure time—from April to July—of its peculiarities. ...
— The Author of Beltraffio • Henry James

... a specimen of the purely romantic drama, in which the interest is not historical, or dependent upon fidelity of portraiture, or the natural connexion of events,—but is a birth of the imagination, and rests only on the coaptation and union of the elements granted to, or assumed by, the poet. It is a species of drama which owes no allegiance to time or space, and in which, ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... conversational meeting of the Mechanics' Institute, Professor J. J. Mapes being present, a question was asked if any one present could give information relative to portraiture from life by the Daguerreotype. Mr. Kells, a friend of Mr. Wolcott and a scientific and practical man (since deceased), at once marked out upon the black-board, the whole as contrived by Mr. Wolcott. This gave publicity to the invention of Mr. Wolcott. Shortly after, Professor ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey

... 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... now first given to readers in an English dress, should surely serve. Avowedly compiled in a vague, desultory way, with no particular regard to chronological sequence, these random recollections should interest us, in the first place, as a piece of unconscious self-portraiture. The cynical Court lady, whose beauty bewitched a great King, and whose ruthless sarcasm made Duchesses quail, is here drawn for us in vivid fashion by her own hand, and while concerned with depicting other figures she really portrays her own. Certainly, in these ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... 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

... oratorical display or forensic combativeness. In literary polish it is not beyond criticism, though occasional infelicities of expression and instances of carelessness do not outweigh the general clearness and force of style. It is not at all points unerring in portraiture, nor infallible in judgment, though the writer's impartiality of spirit and desire to be just are conspicuous, and he gives cogent reasons for opinions expressed. But in broad and comprehensive appreciation ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... to the close examination of the nebulae. In the delineation of the form of these latter objects Herschel found ample employment for his skilful pencil. Many of the drawings he has made of the celestial wonders in the southern sky are admirable examples of celestial portraiture. ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball

... "Edifying, yet entertaining ... faithful portraiture, but ... not in the least like ZOLA ... ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various

... at Yarmouth formed both the opening and the closing scene of this Reading, in six chapters, from "David Copperfield." In its varied portraiture of character and in the wonderful descriptive power marking its conclusion, it was one of the most interesting and impressive of the whole series in its delivery. Through it, we renewed our acquaintance more vividly than ever with ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent

... of language, not to reject poetry, but to ally poetry with familiar and natural thoughts; and delineate crime not with the glaring and fantastic pencil that makes demons spout forth fire and blood ... but with a severe portraiture of men who walk in broad daylight upon the common earth, rendering the ordinary passions of their fellows,—pride, and envy, and ambition, and revenge,—most fearful, from their alliance with stupendous intellect and unconquerable energy. This ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith

... American Legend, by BAYARD TAYLOR, pronounced on the same occasion, and published by John Bartlett, Cambridge, is a graceful portraiture of the elements of romance and poetry in the traditions of our country, and contains passages of uncommon energy of versification, expressing a high order of moral and patriotic sentiment. His allusion to the special legends of different localities are very felicitous ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... wood-pulp mills, told in this book, is entirely a work of imagination. But as I have had to draw very largely on my knowledge of the wood-pulp trade of Eastern Canada, and the conditions under which it is carried on, I desire it to be clearly understood that this story contains no portraiture of any person or persons, living or dead, and contains no representation of any business ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum

... God are 'strained,' and that men are 'enemies of God,' is often repelled as exaggeration, if not as directly false. And, no doubt, the Scripture representation has often been so handled as to become caricature rather than portraiture. Scripture does not deny the lingering presence in men of goodness, partial and defective, nor does it assert that conscious antagonism to God is active in godless men. But it does assert that 'God is ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... cried out against the slaying of the Queen, though—wretch that I was—and gulled by Ballard and Savage, I deemed the exploit so noble and praiseworthy that I even joined Tichborne with me in that accursed portraiture! Yea, you may well deem me mad, but it was Gifford who encouraged me in having it made, no doubt to assure our ruin. Oh, Mr. Talbot! was ever man so ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... impression upon history and upon literature. Romance and poetry, which have done so much for his son, "Bonnie Prince Charlie," have taken hardly any account of him. He figures in Thackeray's "Esmond," but the picture is not made very distinct, even by that master of portraiture, and the merely frivolous side of his character is presented with disproportionate prominence. James Stuart had stronger qualities for good or evil than Thackeray seems to have found in him. Some of his contemporaries denied him the credit of man's ordinary courage; ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... dwell upon the portraiture of that saddest of all created things, the despised of many. I was taught the hard lesson of looking upon cruelty as my daily bread, tears as my daily drink, and scorn as my natural portion. Had not my heart hardened, it must have broken. But before I leave what I call the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... 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, ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck

... with women's matters, a woman, though mean, might in reason have contended with him. A king must be content to be laughed at if he come into Apelles's shop, and dispute about colours and portraiture. I am not ambitious nor envious to carp at matters of higher learning than matters of heraldry, which I profess: that is the slipper, wherein I know a slip when I find it. But see your cunning; you can, with the blur of your pen, dipped in copperas ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... nothing of this kind can be attempted, and a slight outline is all that the sculptor can command, we may anticipate that this outline will be composed with exquisite grace; and that the richness of its ornamental arrangement will atone for the feebleness of its power of portraiture. On the porch of a Northern cathedral we may seek for the images of the flowers that grow in the neighboring fields, and as we watch with wonder the gray stones that fret themselves into thorns, and soften into blossoms, we ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... from life, but unfortunately from hearsay; he had flourished—to the great terror of his neighbours—two generations before me, so that I had to be indebted to others for his portraiture, which was a great disadvantage. It was necessary that the lost man should be an immense scoundrel to prevent pity being excited by the catastrophe, and at that time I did not know any very wicked people. The book was ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn

... art 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 ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James

... older world to learn with something like intimate accuracy the appearance of the King, for though the few pictures that exist of him in certain illuminated manuscripts in the libraries of Sicilian monasteries are, in the first place, but indifferent specimens of the indifferent portraiture of the period, and, in the second place, are almost all taken at a later period of his life, the records, both monastic and civil, of the age furnish descriptions, evidently faithful and always in agreement, which allow of some attempt ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... poets that never versified, and now swarm many versifiers that need never answer to the name of poets. {22} For Xenophon, who did imitate so excellently as to give us effigiem justi imperii, the portraiture of a just of Cyrus, as Cicero saith of him, made therein an absolute heroical poem. So did Heliodorus, {23} in his sugared invention of Theagenes and Chariclea; and yet both these wrote in prose; which I speak to show, that it is not rhyming and versing that ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney

... 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 ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... 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 ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... day that from my past divides My present, and that made me what I am. Still can I see the hot, bright sky, the sea illimitably sparkling, as they showed That morning. Though I deemed I took no note Of heaven or earth or waters, yet my mind Retains to-day the vivid portraiture Of every line and feature of the scene. Light-hearted 'midst the dewy lanes I fared Unto the sea, whose jocund gleam I caught Between the slim boles, when I heard the clink Of naked weapons, then a sudden thrust Sickening to hear, and then a stifled groan; ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... speaks of himself in the womb, "My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously formed in the lowest parts of the earth," &c. Psal. cxxxix. 15. His eyes see all their substance, yet being unperfect, and in his everlasting book all their members are written, the portraiture of every thing is drawn there to the life, and these in continuance are fashioned just as they were written and drawn, and so they exactly correspond to his preconception of them, whatever deformity they may have as to us, yet they are perfect works, and beautiful ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... regulates also the development of the race into dignity of person, as of mind; and their culminating art-skill attains the grasp of entire truth at the moment when the truth becomes most lovely. And then, ideal sculpture may go on safely into portraiture. But I shall not touch on the subject of portrait sculpture to-day; it introduces many questions of detail, and must be a ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin

... draw the portraiture of this noble and stately figure. George Herbert did it perfectly, long ago, in his ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... made extremely piquant and entertaining, by her life-like portraiture of people and events; and every page attests the scrupulous justice with which she sought to penetrate through surfaces to reality, and, forgetting personal prejudices, to apply universally the test of truth. A ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... unreality but a higher reality. It is not the mere type, that art presents, for the type as such does not exist in nature. The individual is not lost but affirmed by this reference to the inner principle of its being. A good portrait has in it an element of caricature; the difference between portraiture and caricature is the difference between emphasis and exaggeration. Art is not the falsification of nature, but the fuller realization of it. It is the interpretation of nature's truth, the translation of it, divined by the artist, into simpler terms to ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... particularly interested in personalities, having done a number of very clever portrait busts. It is enough to look at the portrait bust of Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney's boy to realize what he is able to do in the line of portraiture. He has produced nothing finer in that line. He is a master of ...
— Sculpture of the Exposition Palaces and Courts • Juliet James

... Norton, for his criticism. He thought it wanting in unity; it was a group of studies instead of one study, he said; I must do something to draw the different sketches together in a single effect of portraiture; and this I did my ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the glow of innocent pride as the familiar features of Mr. Gladstone emerge from the bust of Clytie. An accidental stroke of the thumbnail develops new marvels of expression. (By the bye, it's just as well to forbid deliberate attempts at portraiture.) And I know no more becoming expression for everyone than the look of intent and pleasing effort—a divine touch almost—that comes over the common man modelling. For my own part, I feel a being infinitely my own superior when I get my fingers upon the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells

... be short: the interim is mine; And a man's life is no more than to say One. But I am very sorry, good Horatio, That to Laertes I forgot myself; For by the image of my cause I see The portraiture of his: I'll court his favours: But, sure, the bravery of his grief did put me ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]

... 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 possess ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... "Portraiture of characters and events should take the form of one gentleman conversing with another, in the easy tone of good society. The author who sets out to address a crowd defeats his own object; he eliminates ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... of Sir Joshua in portraiture, wanted that evenness of temper which the President of the Royal Academy so abundantly possessed. He was easily angered, but as soon appeased, and says his biographer,[67] "If he was the first to offend, he was the first to atone. Whenever he spoke crossly to his wife, a remarkably ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... statement of the condition of India, and of the past proceedings of the Government in that country, our conviction must be that the right hon. Gentleman will be greatly to be blamed in making any alteration in that Government. At the same time, if it be not a faithful portraiture of the Government, and of its transactions in India, then what the right hon. Gentleman proposes to do in regard to the home administration of that country is altogether insufficient for the occasion. I cannot on the present occasion ...
— Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, Volume 1 • John Bright

... perhaps. I fancy the artists were bunglers. I possess a copy of a very small pencil sketch made of her face by a dear old lady friend of mine, now dead, about the year 1851 or 2. My friend had a gift for portraiture in a peculiar way. When she saw a face that greatly interested her, in a drawing-room, on a platform, in the street, anywhere, it remained very vividly in her mind and on going home she would sketch it, and some ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson

... by special instigation of the evil spirit who haunts successful artists, proceeded further to introduce, heedless of perspective, a rock, on which stood the lively portraiture of Sir Vindex—nose, spectacles, gown, and all; and in his hand a brandished rod, while out of his mouth a label shrieked after the runaways, "You come back!" while a similar label replied from the gallant bark, "Good-bye, master!" the shoving and tittering rose ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... life, means something, but something by no means fully tangible or clear-cut. I shall be glad indeed if I am able to suggest a more comprehensible concept of it, or putting it in another form and better perhaps, to present a more clear-cut portraiture of the spiritual life in ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... a gay hostelry by the road-side, with what was called in those days a portraiture of the Protector swinging from a post which stood on the slip of turf that skirted the house. It was kept by a bluff landlord and a young and pretty landlady, young enough to be her husband's daughter, and discreet ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... man presents a number of excellent features for literary portraiture, because he is a compound of formality and explosiveness. The formal manners and dress and ponderous courtesy of the eighteenth century, combined with an outspoken way of calling things by their ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various

... out to seek you: my heart will always feel the worth of yours." The memory of this first great friend continued to hover over her life to the end. In her last days, generously offended by what she thought the unjust strokes in the portraiture of De Maistre, presented by Lamartine in his "Confidences," she took up her pen in refutation, and wielded it with telling effect. This eloquent vindication of her old friend, when he had been dead nearly forty years, was one of her latest acts, ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... other peculiarity of La Huguerye to which I shall allude is his studied misrepresentation of the character of Jeanne d'Albret, Queen of Navarre. Contrary to the uniform portraiture given by contemporaries of both religious parties, she here appears as "an inconsiderate woman (femme legere), with little forethought," "known to be jealous of the authority of the admiral," "whom she ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... monument in the Saxon language is the poem called Beowulf, the author and antiquity of which are alike unknown. It is at once a romantic legend and an instructive portraiture of the earliest Saxon period—"an Anglo-Saxon poetical romance," says Sharon Turner, "true in costume and manners, but with an invented story." Before proceeding to a consideration of this poem, let us look for a moment at some of the characteristics of Saxon ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... dozen pieces, which for one reason or another will ever make a lasting appeal to readers. The sense of tragedy in "The Old Familiar Faces"—more remarkable in that it was tragedy realized and expressed at the age of three-and-twenty—the weird imagination of "The Gipsy's Malison," the sweet portraiture of "Hester," the fancy of "A Farewell to Tobacco," and the "Ode to the Treadmill," will ensure that portion of his work to which they belong, sharing the immortality of the ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... 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 point to what ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs

... the position of the tender herb, which supports his huge body on their extreme summits. As he is lying on the left side Eve is ascending from a circular aperture in his right; nor would the original, if she bore any resemblance to her monkish portraiture, excite the envy or the admiration of the present age, or bear comparison with her fair posterity. Her physiognomy is anything but fascinating, and her figure is a repulsive monstrosity, adorned with a profusion of luxurious hair ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather

... lady is one of the heroines of the "Histoire de ma Vie," we cannot do it justice without lingering a little over her portraiture. She is described as tall, fair, and of a Saxon type of beauty. Her manners would seem to have been de haute ecole, and her culture was on a large and noble scale. Austere in her morals, her faith was the deistic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... handkerchief. "Sit here and let me see how the light falls. No, that isn't good; that dress won't do at all." (The gown came too far up on her neck to suit this artistic young gentleman's ideas regarding the value of curved lines in portraiture.) "That collar spoils everything. Can't you wear something else? I'd rather see you in full dress. I want the line of the throat ending in the sweep of the shoulder, and then I want the long curl against the flesh tones. You haven't worn your hair that way since ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith

... however, were much more philosophical and political than theological. The turning point in his intellectual development was his meeting with Coleridge in 1798. Soon after this he studied art with the view of becoming a painter, and devoted himself specially to portraiture, but though so good a judge as his friend, J. Northcote, R.A., believed he had the talent requisite for success, he could not satisfy himself, and gave up the idea, though always retaining his love of art. He then definitely turned to literature, and in 1805 pub. his first ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... study in female portraiture showed how far he could travel towards perfection. Mrs. Craddock, which is often called his best book, is a sex satire punctuated by four curtains, two of comedy and two of tragedy. This mixture of opposites should have been enough to damn ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... 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 and lofty crime. We recognise in the picture features familiar to the North: the roving ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... works thinking to improve anything essential: he will be sure to punish himself. The bad is radically odious, and to endeavor in any manner to ennoble it, is to violate the laws of propriety. Hence, in my opinion, Dante, and even Tasso, have been much more successful in their portraiture ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various

... above. Our own impression of the nature of Edgar A. Poe, differs in some important degree, however, from that which has been generally conveyed in the notices of his death. Let us, before telling what we personally know of him, copy a graphic and highly finished portraiture, from the pen of Dr. Rufus W. Griswold, which appeared in a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... on the things of others." The "charity that envieth not, that vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth"—does it not almost seem as if the portraiture was drawn in view of the contrast often exhibited by men in their political relations?—this charity must be preserved, its image unbroken, amidst all the struggle and competition of public or of ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett

... his love of 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 been told. His criticisms ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... eccentric and extravagant, who in those 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 ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... gone too far in this portraiture of our times? I do not anticipate this stricture, but rather another—that I have proved too much by it. You will tell me that the picture I have presented resembles the humanity of our day, but it also ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various

... about: one hemisphere of his brain must have been otherwise occupied and his mental cecity makes him a phenomenon even amongst reviewers. He thus ignores all the lofty morale of the work, its marvellous pathos and humour, its tender sentiment and fine touches of portraiture, the personal individuality and the nice discrimination between the manifold heroes and heroines which combine to make it a ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... philosophy of Poetry is not necessary to its existence any more than the astronomy of the heavens is to the brilliancy of the sun or to the splendors of a comet. A Poet is a creator, and his most perfect creature is a portraiture of any work of God or man; of any attribute of God or man in perfect keeping with Nature or with the original prototype, be it in fact or in fiction, in repose or ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... about Oscar as a schoolboy are sadly meagre and insignificant. Fortunately for my readers I have received from Sir Edward Sullivan, who was a contemporary of Oscar both at school and college, an exceedingly vivid and interesting pen-picture of the lad, one of those astounding masterpieces of portraiture only to be produced by the plastic sympathies of boyhood and the intimate intercourse of years lived in common. It is love alone which in later life can achieve such a miracle of representment. I am very glad to be allowed to publish ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... great revival of pictorial art took place about A.D. 1570 in the reign of Akbar. From that date the Indo-Persian and Indian schools of painting maintained a high standard of excellence, especially in portraiture, for a century approximately. During the eighteenth century marked deterioration may be observed. See A History of Fine Art in ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... keeper of the public-house there very largely; and the village Boniface, overflowing with gratitude, expressed his anxiety to have a Scott's Head for his sign-post. The poet demurred to this proposal, and assured mine host that nothing could be more appropriate than the portraiture of a foaming tankard, which already surmounted his doorway. "Why, the painter man has not made an ill job," said the landlord, "but I would fain have something more connected with the book that has brought me so much good custom." He produced a well-thumbed copy, and handing ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... While the bee with honeyed thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring, With such concert as they keep, Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep: And let some strange mysterious dream Wave at his wings in airy stream Of lively portraiture displayed, Softly on my eyelids laid: And as I wake sweet music breathe Above, about, or underneath, Sent by some spirit to mortals good, Or the unseen Genius of the wood. But let my due feet never fail, To walk the studious cloister's pale, And love the high ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... violin from the vantage point of the crowning hill of Rome, had no such portraiture of the degradation of humanity as that which the Magnates nightly view from their balconies. A stranger would be struck with surprise that the thousands should be huddled in dens that wild animals would find uninhabitable, while the sons of ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams

... true clue to the interpretation of a book. To know it aright we must know the age in which it was produced. This is the method by which such surprising light has been shed on many great works. Who that has read Taine's graphic portraiture of the Elizabethan age can fail ever thereafter to see Shakespeare stand forth vividly? What can we make of Dante without some knowledge of Italy in the thirteenth century? What new life is given to Milton's Samson after we have seen ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton

... man must 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 ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... seem hardly likely to have been employed by him in this 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, stanzas 31-34. ...
— Adonais • Shelley

... thou wilt, With lighter probe or deep, touching the faith, By the which thou didst on the billows walk. If he in love, in hope, and in belief, Be steadfast, is not hid from thee: for thou Hast there thy ken, where all things are beheld In liveliest portraiture. But since true faith Has peopled this fair realm with citizens, Meet is, that to exalt its glory more, Thou in his ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... senses at this moment, that there are charms and graces in such greetings, such as no other greeting can possess. I know that in every beautiful work of the Almighty hand, which is illustrated in your lectures, and in every real or ideal portraiture of fortitude and goodness that you find in your books, there is something that must bring you home again to them for its brightest and best example. And therefore, gentlemen, I hope that you will never be without them, or without an increasing number of them in your ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens

... extenuating nothing, and, I need hardly add, setting down 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 love of ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine

... But such portraiture as the above is apt to get very vague and insipid unless one is able to convey a vivid picture of the man as he walked, and spoke, and lived. The sic sedebat in Trinity College (Cambridge) chapel has given more people a thrill at the thought of Bacon ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson

... pious and charitable foundations is a vindication of the truth of the portraiture of the "Prologue." The foundation of a new monastery and the endowment of the friars had alike ceased to attract the benevolent donor, who was turning his attention to the universities, where secular clergy were numerous. The clerks of ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait

... Flaubert, whom he has styled "that irreproachable master whom I admire above all others." In certain directions, I do not think that De Maupassant has surpassed Une Vie, in fidelity to nature, in a Dutch exactitude of portraiture, in a certain distinction of tone; it was the history of an unhappy gentlewoman, doomed throughout life to be deceived, impoverished, disdained and overwhelmed. Bel-Ami, 1885, which succeeded this quiet and Quaker-colored book, was a much more vivid novel, an extremely ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... Drawing.—Good work in portraiture depends on good drawing, just as other work does. Don't think that because it is only a head you can make it more easily than anything else. As in other kinds of work, the drawing you should try for ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

... sedulously he may have set to work about it. In spite of his candid purpose he omits necessary touches and adds superfluous ones. At times he cannot help draping his thought, and the least shred of drapery becomes a disguise. It is only the diarist who accomplishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, without any such end in view, does it unconsciously. A man cannot keep a daily record of his comings and goings and the little items that make up the sum of his life, and not inadvertently betray himself at every turn. He lays bare his heart with a candor not possible to the ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... and pleasing to the Roman eye, rather than with the characteristics of a despised race. The triumph of the Church made these precautions unnecessary, and then arose the desire of exhibiting a truer portraiture of Christ. The first addition to the conventional type was that of the beard, and probably of the hair ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani

... having portrayed herself—as Sapho—in a flattering light in her novel Cyrus; but it must be remembered that at that time this was a common custom, women of the highest quality indulging in such pastimes, there even being a prominent salon where verbal portraiture was the sole occupation. No one has written more or better on the condition of woman, for she, above all, had the experience upon which to base her writings. The idea of woman's education and aim, which ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... give a longer term of copyright than my noble friend gives. Can he match that list? Does not that list contain what England has produced greatest in many various ways—poetry, philosophy, history, eloquence, wit, skilful portraiture of life and manners? I confidently therefore call on the Committee to take my plan in preference to the plan of my noble friend. I have shown that the protection which he proposes to give to letters is unequal, and unequal in the worst way. I have shown that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 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 ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... therefore, the duty of every painter at present, who has not much invention, is to take subjects of which the portraiture will be precious in after times; views of our abbeys and cathedrals; distant views of cities, if possible chosen from some spot in itself notable by association; perfect studies of the battle-fields of Europe, of all houses of celebrated men, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... made his hurried visits to Paris, these pictures, then in the Luxembourg, had been among those which had most vitally affected him. The beautiful surface and keeping which connected them with the old tradition, together with the modern spirit, the trenchant simplicity of their portraiture, had sent him back—eager and palpitating—to his own work on the picture of Madame de Pastourelles, or on the last stages of the ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... 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 greatly advancing by the finest models, ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford

... on the subject of Cytherea's feelings that had passed between himself and Miss Aldclyffe in the afternoon, and by a confusion of thought, natural enough under the trying experience, concluded that because the lady was truthful in her portraiture of effects, she must necessarily be right in her assumption of causes. That is, he was convinced that Cytherea—the hitherto-believed faithful Cytherea—had, at any rate, looked with something more than indifference upon the extremely handsome ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy

... skill of an Oedipus to divine that in giving us so graphic a picture of The Vicar and his Duties, the Rev. A. Gatty has had the advantage of sketching from the life, and that his portraiture of ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 184, May 7, 1853 • Various

... (Vol. vii., p. 317. Vol. viii., p. 184.).—Is M. E. of Philadelphia laughing at us, when he refers us to a woodcut in some American pictorial publication on the American Revolution for a true portraiture of the figure and features of King George III.; different, I presume, from that which I gave you. His woodcut, he says, is taken "from an English engraving;" he does not tell us who either painter or engraver was—but ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various

... equaled or 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various

... 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 come."—Mrs. Caroline ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... by Giorgione, and Titian, and Tintoret, and Paul Veronese, and Bonifazio. Look at this Musical Party by Giorgione, this landscape by Titian, this portrait of the vile Duke of Alva by the same great master, the greatest master of all in portraiture. It is the Duke himself, not merely in his outward presence, but such as the insight of one as profoundly versed in human as in external nature beheld him. The portrait is a biography of the man, and one may ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... his shoulders with some strong covering, and concealing his countenance, stalk in with a hollow, menacing, and inarticulate tone. Lest that should not be sufficient, the servants had, stuck by the fireplace, the portraiture of a hobgoblin, to which they had given the name of Palethorp. For some years I was in the condition of poor Dr. Priestley, on whose bodily frame another name, too awful to be mentioned, used to produce a sensation more ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner

... there he might espy Prostrate before a marble deity, Which, by its portraiture, appeared to be The image of Diana; on their knee They tendered their devotions, with sweet airs, Offering the incense of their praise and prayers. Their garments all alike; beneath their paps Buckled together with a silver claps, And 'cross ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... sense to comprehend them; but for the trigonometry of painting, nature has constituted them indifferently well. They take a stand on the distinction between portrait and history, and there they are spell-bound. Tell them that there can be no fine history without portraiture, that the painter must proceed from that ground to the one above it, and that a hundred bad heads cannot make one good historical picture, and they will not believe you, though the thing is obvious to any gross capacity. Their ideas always fly to the circumference, and never ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... figures made from one block, such as rise before us from Tolstoi's pages. His art is rather that of a painter or musical composer than of a sculptor. He has more colour, a deeper perspective, a greater variety of lights and shadows—a more complete portraiture of the spiritual man. Tolstoi's people stand so living and concrete that one feels one can recognise them in the street. Turgenev's are like people whose intimate confessions and private correspondence, unveiling all the secrets ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev

... identified it. A complete transformation destroys the likeness which was begun. There is an intentional dislocation of the parts of the story, when they might make it imprudently close in its reflection of facts or resemblance in portraiture. A feature is shown, a manifest allusion made, and then the poet starts off in other directions, to confuse and perplex all attempts at interpretation, which might be too particular and too certain. This was no doubt merely according to the fashion of the time, ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... French schoolmasters and teachers were visiting the exposition, to have public lectures given in which all the business of dark closets, hand-tying, materialization of spirits, presenting the faces of the departed, and ghostly portraiture was fully performed by professional mountebanks, and afterward ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... Saillard, is one of those persons who escape portraiture through their utter commonness; yet who ought to be sketched, because they are specimens of that second-rate Parisian bourgeoisie which occupies a place above the well-to-do artisan and below the upper middle classes,—a tribe whose virtues ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac

... a classic polish in these volumes, and a felicity of grouping and of portraiture, which invest the subject with the attractions of a living and stirring episode in the grand ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... 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

... This vivid portraiture of a scene, which the writer is pleased to consider grand, does not appear to have much relation to the history of the Genus Bos: it however, exhibits the brutal and ferocious habits of two varieties of Genus Homo, namely Nobility and Mobility—two varieties which, ...
— Delineations of the Ox Tribe • George Vasey

... the outset by the words, "You are a man": he then talked about several works in a way that Goethe thought very just; and he criticised one passage of the poet's youthful work, "Werther," as untrue to nature, with which Goethe agreed. On Voltaire's "Mahomet" he heaped censure, for its unworthy portraiture of the conqueror of the East and its ineffective fatalism. "These pieces belong to an obscure age. Besides, what do they mean with their fatalism? Politics is fatalism." The significance of this saying ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... rapidity of movement, fulness and richness of reality, exuberance of invention, excellent portraiture, dramatic vehemence, and an almost unrivalled sympathy with the swift and passionate world of angels. What he lacked was power of composition, simplicity of total effect, harmony in coloring, control over ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... 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

... follows the lower course. There arose at one time a school of art, which delighted to paint the human face as perfect in beauty; and from that time to this we are discontented unless every woman is drawn for us as a Venus, or, at least, a Madonna. I do not know that we have gained much by this untrue portraiture, either in beauty or in art. There may be made for us a pretty thing to look at, no doubt;—but we know that that pretty thing is not really visaged as the mistress whom we serve, and whose lineaments we desire to perpetuate on the canvas. The winds of heaven, or the flesh-pots of Egypt, or the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope

... the picture as I have it in my mind would be beyond my art; it is not in the pen—not in the brush either, I should think—to convey even a tolerable portraiture of the ruggedness, the fairy grouping, the shelves, hollows, crags, terraces, precipices, and beach of this kingdom of ice, where its frontal line broke away from the smooth face of the tall reaches, and ran with a ploughed, scarred, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... flattened ready to strike. Thackeray worked on the same theme in his story of little Stubbs. Lyndon is the Lucifer of rascals; Stubbs—well, Stubbs beggars the English vocabulary; he is too low, too mean for adjectives to describe him, and I could almost find it in my heart to wish that his portraiture had never been placed before the horrified eyes of men. Yet this Stubbs—a being who was drawn from life—has a profound belief in the rectitude of everything that he does. Even when he tells us how he invited his gang of unspeakables home, to drink away his mother's ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... her. The rigid, soulless image with the golden circle round the head slowly melted into sweet womanhood. In Italy this sentiment inspired wonderful paintings of the Madonna, and was responsible for the development of portraiture in general. The hold of the overwhelming tradition was broken. Rejecting the universal conviction that the historical Mary had resembled the Mary of Byzantine art, the artist, under the dominion of his woman-worship—which surpassed and re-valued ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka

... by a saving clause, which Sidney perhaps would hardly have accepted, it is further defined as being to show "the very age and body of the time his form and pressure". Yet it must be remembered that Sidney is loud in praise of so unflinching a portraiture of life, base and noble, as Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida. And on the whole it remains true that the limitations of Sidney are the limitations of his age, while his generosity ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... profoundly interesting, which it is good to have [63] come across, are worked out, not in rapid sketches, nor by hazardous epigram, but more securely by patient analysis; and though we have said that Mrs. Ward is most successful in female portraiture, her own mind and culture have an unmistakable virility and grasp and scientific firmness. This indispensable intellectual process, which will be relished by admirers of George Eliot, is relieved constantly by the sense of a charming landscape ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater

... quite sure that I should have noticed it, if I had not known his story. He spoke not a word, and met nobody's eye, but kept staring upward into the smoky vacancy towards the ceiling, where, it might be, he beheld a continual portraiture of his victim's horror-stricken agonies. I rather fancy, however, that his moral sense was yet too torpid to trouble him with such remorseful visions, and that, for his own part, he might have had very agreeable reminiscences of the soldier's death, if other eyes had not been bent reproachfully ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... and at any modern time. There are numbers of such men as the Duke and such women as the Duchess in our midst. Both are, however, drawn with mastery. Browning has rarely done his work with more insight, with greater keenness of portraiture, with happier brevity and selection. As in The Flight of the Duchess, untoward fate has bound together two temperaments sure to clash with each other—and no gipsy comes to deliver the woman in this case. The man's nature kills her. It happens ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... gigantic size. He wore a beard above a foot long, and his face as well as his body was covered with dark red hair, from which his nick-name originated. The description given by Sir Walter Scott does not entirely correspond with this portraiture. "His stature," says that writer, "was not of the tallest, but his person was uncommonly strong and compact." The great peculiarity of his frame was the great length of his arms, owing to which he could, without stooping, tie the garters of his Highland ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... the wall,—three, and no more. One was a copy of the lovely portraiture of Milton's musical inspired youth; the wonderful eyes, the "breezy hair," the impassioned purity of the countenance, looked down on the place where the musician might be found three-fourths of her waking hours, at her piano. In other parts of the room, opposite each other, were pictures ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... fed, like no other, on the Book of the histories of Souls. Matthew Arnold more distinctively than either, and both for better and for worse, was the scholar-poet; among other things he was, with Heredia and Carducci, a master of the poetry of critical portraiture, which focusses in a few lines (Sophocles, Rahel, Heine, Obermann Once More) the meaning of a great career ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various

... one or two but dozens of her; we know her emptiness, her tenacity, her futility, savagery and want of light; all circles contain some examples of her, all people some of her shortcomings; and judgment of her, even the isolation of her in portraiture, is dangerous, since the world does not consist of her and life needs her. In life as in art those who condemn are those who do not understand; and it is always a sign of a writer's power, that he or she keeps ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor

... it is remarkable—almost, indeed, a gallery in itself, comprising as it does portraiture, design, topography, and the delineation of one of the most spirited episodes in religious history. After the magic words "One Pound," it is, of course, to St. George and the Dragon that the eye first turns. ...
— A Boswell of Baghdad - With Diversions • E. V. Lucas

... straightforward manner, Mr. Edward Stratemeyer endeavors to show his boy readers what persistency, honesty, and willingness to work have accomplished for his young hero, and his moral is evident. Mr. Stratemeyer is very earnest and sincere in his portraiture of young character beginning to shape itself to weather against the future. A book of this sort is calculated to interest boys, to feed their ambition with hope, and to indicate how they must fortify themselves against the wiles ...
— Freaks of Fortune - or, Half Round the World • Oliver Optic

... 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 humorous, extravagant and delicately shaded, of the student life enjoyed ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... 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

... furnished him with the means of proceeding to Rome (1764), where he remained for a number of years engaged principally in copying the old masters. Among the original works which he then painted was the "Origin of Portraiture''—representing a Corinthian maid drawing her lover's shadow—well known through Domenico Cunego's excellent engraving. This gained for him the gold medal given by the Academy of St Luke in the year 1773 for the best specimen of historical composition. Returning from Rome in 1777, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... of fiction. In what she wrote on this subject two ideas stand out distinctly, that women are to find in novel-writing a literary field peculiarly adapted to their capacities, and that the novel should be a true portraiture of life. ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... 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 ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... solitariness, A portraiture doth well express, By sleeping dog, cat: Buck and Doe, Hares, Conies in the desert go: Bats, Owls the shady bowers over, In melancholy darkness hover. Mark well: If't be not as't should be, Blame the bad ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... cement this holy bond. Nature had never for each other formed Two fairer hearts. And never had the world Approved a wiser or a happier choice. Still had the youth adored his lovely bride In the dull limner's portraiture alone. How thrilled his heart, then, in the hope to find The truth of all that e'en his fondest dreams Had scarcely dared to credit in her picture! In Padua, where his studies held him bound; Fernando panted for the joyful hour, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... 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 ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... few guineas to have their own senseless heads painted, and then assume the air and use the language of patrons, Turner administered a similar hint to Beechey. When the lecture was over, Beechey walked up to Fuseli, and said, "How sharply you have been cutting up us poor laborers in portraiture!" "Not you, Sir William," exclaimed the professor, "I only spoke of the blasted fools who ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner

... (and he took to that toy very kindly) by getting up Goblin slides for magic-lanterns, whereon the Powers of Darkness were depicted as a sort of supernatural shell-fish, with human faces. In intensifying the portraiture of Giants, he had sunk quite a little capital; and, though no painter himself, he could indicate, for the instruction of his artists, with a piece of chalk, a certain furtive leer for the countenances of those monsters, which was safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young gentleman ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens

... Whitman maintained that there is much in Shakespeare to offend the democratic mind; and there is no reason why an intelligent Tory should not praise Shakespeare for what Whitman deplored in him. There is every reason, however, why the portraiture of Shakespeare as a Tory, if it is to be done, should be done with grace, intelligence, and sureness of touch. Mr. Whibley throws all these qualifications to the winds, especially the second. The proof of Shakespeare's Toryism, for instance, which he draws from ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... of her sick teacher. The faint blue crescents beneath—those strange shadows of the grave, which sometimes seem the deepest when the eyes above are giving the brightest light—imparted a frail, delicate beauty to her countenance. They were the last master-touches of Nature in working out that portraiture ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... 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 and magnitude ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... on the portraiture of discipleship, and thence draw fresh pleas. The blessed result of accepting Christ's revelation is a knowledge, built on happy experience, and, like the acquaintance of heart with heart, issuing in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren

... by Arthur Johnson (Harper & Brothers). With the publication of this volume, Mr. Johnson at last takes his rightful place among the best of the American short story writers who wish to continue the tradition of Henry James. In subtlety of portraiture he is the equal of Edith Wharton, and he excels her in ease and in his ability to subdue his substance to the environment in which it is set. He surpasses Mrs. Gerould by reason of the variety of his subject matter, and as a stylist he is equal to Anne Douglas Sedgwick. I have ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... fire burned in 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

... applications of the acetylene light, each of much value, but involving no new principle which need be noticed. The light is so actinic, or rich in rays acting upon silver salts, that it is peculiarly useful to the photographer, either for portraiture or for his various positive printing operations. Acetylene is very convenient for optical lantern work on the small scale, or where the oxy-hydrogen or oxy-coal-gas light cannot be used. Its intensity and small size make its self-luminous ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield

... Portraiture would seem to be more in esteem than ever. Everywhere along the walls are to be seen nothing but statesmen, poets and women of the world, whose identity is indicated in the official catalogue by initials ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various

... a correct census of the Florida Seminole by name, sex, age, gens, and place of living. I have endeavored to present a faithful portraiture of their appearance and personal characteristics, and have enlarged upon their manners and customs, as individuals and as a society, as much as the material at my command will allow; but under the disadvantageous circumstances ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley

... is a fear that you are one of those who are unjust to our old Tennyson's Duke of Wellington. I have just been talking it over with Symonds; and we agreed that whether for its metrical effects, for its brief, plain, stirring words of portraiture, as - he 'that never lost an English gun,' or - the soldier salute; or for the heroic apostrophe to Nelson; that ode has never been surpassed in any tongue or time. Grant me the Duke, O Weg! I suppose you must not put in yours about ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... catastrophe of a bloody fight beginning, overpowered all other considerations; and they advanced to the door, which had only just fallen to. Thus, when Mr. Maybold raised his eyes after the stooping he beheld glaring through the door Mr. Penny in full- length portraiture, Mail's face and shoulders above Mr. Penny's head, Spinks's forehead and eyes over Mail's crown, and a fractional part of Bowman's countenance under Spinks's arm—crescent-shaped portions of other heads and faces ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy

... so few and such ordinary words. I told you before whom these riddles did concern; and as they were opened, the people did evidently see it was so. Yea, they did gather that the things themselves were a kind of portraiture, and that of Emmanuel himself; for when they read in the scheme where the riddles were writ, and looked in the face of the Prince, things looked so like the one to the other that Mansoul could not forbear but say, This is the Lamb, this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan



Words linked to "Portraiture" :   word-painting, depiction, portray, characterisation, word picture, picture, portrayal



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