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Portraiture   Listen
Portraiture

noun
1.
A word picture of a person's appearance and character.  Synonyms: portrait, portrayal.
2.
The activity of making portraits.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Portraiture" Quotes from Famous Books



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

... the empire. With the rich accumulation of ages, the Romans were familiar. They knew nothing indeed of the solitary grandeur of the Jewish muse, or the mythological myths of the Ante-Homeric songsters; but they possessed the Iliad and the Odyssey, with their wonderful truthfulness, and clear portraiture of character, their absence of all affectation, their serenity and cheerfulness, their good sense and healthful sentiments, yet so original that the germ of almost every character which has since figured in epic poetry ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... 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 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various

... Porphyry porfiro. Porpoise fokseno. Port (harbour) haveno. Portable portebla. Portend antauxsciigi. Porter (doorkeeper) pordisto. Porter portisto. Portfolio paperujo. Portion (allot) dividi. Portion porcio, parto, doto. Portmanteau valizo, vestkesto. Portrait portreto. Portraiture (art) pentrarto. Position (place) loko. Position situacio. Positive pozitiva. Possess posedi. Possessive poseda. Possessor posedanto. Possible, to render ebligi. Possible ebla. Possibility ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... Botticelli, Cosimo, Rosselli, and Ghirlandajo. Melozzo da Forli worked for him. One of that painter's few remaining masterpieces is the wall-picture, now in the Vatican, which represents Sixtus among his Cardinals and Secretaries—a magnificent piece of vivid portraiture. Sixtus again threw the Vatican library open to the public, and In his days the Confraternity of S. Luke was founded for the encouragement of design. Rome owes to him the hospital of S. Spirito, a severe building, by Baccio ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... justifies the fame he had won in other performances by the harmonious blending of such particular excellences as he had exhibited in separation. It indeed illustrates his capacities for the highest range of historical portraiture and characterization, and will occasion regrets wherever similar subjects have in recent years been confided to other artists. We have heard that it is in contemplation to place in the park of our own ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... 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, therefore, errors of chronology ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... with 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 not in all their thoughts,' and that their wills are 'not subject to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren

... uncertain and undefined, 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 and lofty ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... humility, the timid Hilliard, who seeks to propitiate his charmer by ransoming her from a base liaison and supporting her in luxury for a season in Paris, is thrown off like an old glove when a richer parti declares himself. The subtlety of the portraiture and the economy of the author's sympathy for his hero impart a subacid flavour of peculiar delicacy to the book, which would occupy a high place in the repertoire of any lesser artist. It well exhibits the conflict between an exaggerated contempt for, and an extreme susceptibility ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing

... every artificer and workmaster, that passeth his time by night as by day; they that cut gravings of signets, and his diligence is to make great variety; he will set his heart to preserve likeness in his portraiture, and will be wakeful to finish his work. So is the smith sitting by the anvil, and considering the unwrought iron; the vapour of the fire will waste his flesh, and in the heat of the furnace will he wrestle with his work; the noise ...
— Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature • Various

... bits of self-portraiture, is not to be accepted too literally. So taken, it confounds, I think, coldness and harshness with a very different quality, a want of quick and versatile sympathy, and 'thickness of skin' with the pride which would not admit, even to itself, any tendency ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... contend that good taste or moderation determined the movement of his genius. Nor, though his insight into the essential dreadfulness of Italian tragedy was so deep, is it possible to maintain that his portraiture of Italian life was true to its more superficial aspects. What place would there be for a Correggio or a Raphael in such a world as Webster's? Yet we know that the art of Raphael and Correggio is in exact harmony with the Italian temperament ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... art. He has wrought that which proves his claim to a broader title than that of painter. Were it not for the vagueness which involves the appellation of historical painter, it might be that. Even were we obliged to confine our interest and study to the portraiture which he has executed, we might, in view of its remarkable character, designate ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various

... sedate and serious character, if they displayed few of the graces of European polish, at least gave no manifestation of an innate vulgarity. As it may not be uninteresting to the reader to have a slight sketch of the warriors, we will attempt the portraiture. ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... Francesco Alidosi, with his dagger, in the open streets of Bologna. His wife, Eleanora Ippolita Gonzaga, presided with grace over that brilliant and cultivated Court which Castiglione made famous by his Cortegiano. The Duke and Duchess survive to posterity in two masterpieces of portraiture by the hand of Titian which now adorn the Gallery ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds

... every village throughout Germany. From the polar latitudes to the Mediterranean, from the mouths of the Rhine to the Euxine, there was no other exhibition of free deliberative eloquence in any popular assembly. And the Luise of Voss alone, a metrical idyl not less valued for its truth of portraiture than our own Vicar of Wakefield, will show, that the most sequestered clergyman of a rural parish did not think his breakfast equipage complete without the latest report from the great senate that sat ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... 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

... surely at fault here. Neither in the natural impulses of a dozen Judean fishermen and peasants, nor in the bigoted breast of Saul of Tarsus, could these unique and sublime conceptions have found their genesis. They are manifestly divine. How exalted is the portraiture of the Christ! What human skill could have depicted a character which no ideal of our best ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... 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 ...
— Poetics • Aristotle

... the noun; a common one in every language—it was curious that what so signalized the stranger, and made him look like a kind of foreigner, among the crowd (as to some it make him appear more or less unreal in this portraiture), was but the expression of so prevalent a quality. Such goodness seemed his, allied with such fortune, that, so far as his own personal experience could have gone, scarcely could he have known ill, physical or moral; and as for knowing or suspecting the latter in any serious degree ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville

... history will not need a portraiture of his character. He was evidently made for the position he so long occupied. He was an acknowledged leader in the Lord's host; a Moses and a Joshua, with traits of character resembling those both of Elijah, and of the Apostle Paul. To idleness, vagrancy, and drunkenness, besetting ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... here 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 read in the narrow, hard, and wily face the history of his cruel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... in relief; photocollography; stereoscopic prints; enlarged and micrographic photographs; color photography; direct, indirect, and photocolor printing; scientific and other applications of photography; artistic photography as applied to portraiture, landscapes, etc. ...
— Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission • Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission

... Wordsworthian in general, and a devotee of this poem in particular, to venture on a criticism, it would be that, barring the couplet about Pain and Bloodshed, the character would serve as well for the "Happy Statesman" as for the "Happy Warrior." There is nothing specially warlike in the portraiture ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell

... 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 ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... youthful, in point of conception; and we need not wonder that this intellectual crudeness should have outweighed its finished poetic beauties in its author's mind. It contains however one piece of mental portraiture which, with slight modifications, might have stood for Mr. Browning when he re-edited the work, as it clearly did when he wrote it. It begins thus (vol. i. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... dues of faithful memory fondly paid To him, devotion's bard! dear sacred shade! Then my paternal hand was prompt to raise To that blest pupil, who had shar'd his praise A similar record of tender truth; The genuine portraiture of studious youth— Task of such pleasing pain, as pierc'd the heart Of Daedalus, the sire of antient art! When, in fond zeal, his busy hand begun To mould the story of his hapless son, But falter'd, while, o'erwhelm'd ...
— Poems on Serious and Sacred Subjects - Printed only as Private Tokens of Regard, for the Particular - Friends of the Author • William Hayley

... restraint of strength and wrath in every soundless motion of the 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

... actual history of his faith; but being, I suppose, myself one of the last surviving witnesses of the character of recluse life as it still existed in the beginning of this century, I can point to the portraiture of it given by Scott in the introduction to 'The Monastery' as one perfect and trustworthy, to the letter and to the spirit; and for myself can say, that the most gentle, refined, and in the deepest sense amiable, phases of character I have ever known, have been either those ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... 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 strongly idealizing tendencies ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... without his beard—Mr. Garrick, as his portrait reveals, played the part with a clean-shaven face, and John Kemble followed his example; but could the ghost of Hamlet's father ever have defied the poet's portraiture of him, and walked the platform of Elsinore Castle without a "sable-silvered" chin? Has an audience ever viewed tolerantly a bald Romeo, or a Juliet grown gray in learning how to impersonate that heroine to perfection? It is clear ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... should lose the general in the individual, and descend from the rank of science to mere biography.(111) The deeper insight which is gradually obtained into the complexity of nature, together with the fuller conviction of human freedom, is causing artistic portraiture and ethical analysis to be substituted for historical generalization. The same method however applies to the region of thought as well ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... to a book entitled Eikon Basilike, the Portraiture of his sacred majesty King Charles the first in his solitudes ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett

... a subject for such humble portraiture as I can attempt, and she will henceforth appear in these pages only as occasion requires. It is time that we turn ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... could have willingly spared. But his last completed book, Catriona (1893), seemed to some judges of at least considerable experience the best thing he had yet done, especially in one all-important respect—that he here conquered either an unwillingness to attempt or an inability to achieve the portraiture of feminine character, which his books had previously displayed. The general opinion, too, was that the unfinished Weir of Hermiston (1897), which he left a fragment at his death, was the best and strongest thing he had done, while it showed in particular a distinct relinquishment, for something ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... respect Shakspere stood apart from his rivals, with their merely literary training. And in point of fact, we do find in his plays, year by year, a strengthening sense of the realities of human nature, despite their frequently idealistic method of portraiture, the verbalism and factitiousness of much of their wit, and their conventionality of plot. Above all things, the man who drew so many fancifully delightful types of womanhood must have been intensely appreciative ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson

... girl seemed to see that face as though it had a more direct presentment before her eyes than this faded portraiture of words penned by a ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck

... speak here, indeed, according to the English apprehension of the Scotch character, for in Scotland, strange to say—that is, to Englishmen it will appear strange—the people believe themselves to be remarkable for want of foresight—'aye wise ahint the hand,' is their own self-portraiture—and for a certain ardour of genius which leads them into all sorts of scrapes. The issue is, after all, a hard one, and viewing the long services of Mr Jerdan to the literary republic, we would hope that a cheerful life-evening is still in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various

... 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

... conspicuously. There were always small groups before it, for it created something like the uproar that Manet's "Olympia" had raised in its time. Peter learned from one critic that his technique was magnificent, his picture a masterpiece of psychology and of portraiture, and that if he kept on he'd soon be one of the Immortals. He learned from another that while he undoubtedly had technique, his posing was commonplace, his subject banal, his imagination hopelessly bourgeois; that he was a painter of the ugly and the ordinary, without inspiration ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler

... of the work of the photographer must continue to be portraiture. He cannot greatly reduce the cost of getting a really good negative, because so much hand-labour is required for the task of "retouching"; but he can give, perhaps, a hundred prints for the price which he now charges for a dozen, and make ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... pictures on 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... Generally speaking, 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, and ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin

... a triumph of 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 Dawes, it must be assumed ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne

... 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 ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... 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 ...
— Publisher's Advertising (1872) • Anonymous

... the great Academic schools of painting, for instance, such as the school of Sicyon, that sought to preserve the dignified traditions of the antique mode, or the realistic and impressionist schools, that aimed at reproducing actual life, or the elements of ideality in portraiture, or the artistic value of the epic form in an age so modern as theirs, or the proper subject-matter for the artist. Indeed, I fear that the inartistic temperaments of the day busied themselves also in matters of ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... with an inspired and inspiring scheme, his idea being no less than to paint the society of an epoch from top to base, to present in a series of books, the writing of which should fill his literary lifetime, a completed portraiture of the whole people of his land and day. In the course of such a labour as he had courageously appointed for himself, many lines of special inquiry were necessarily indicated, but the details for which he searched ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

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

... diameter, sustain the portico, and 32 the great dome, above which is a lantern terminated by a figure in bronze 17 feet high. There is a great deal of sculpture about the building, some allegorical, others portraiture; its total height is 282 feet. The exterior is in the form of a Grecian cross. The paintings are by the Barons Gros, and Gerard; although a most noble structure, yet it is not consistently grand in all its bearings. Monuments of the ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve

... 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 • William Wallace Blancke

... 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 enough to be an old man's wife with credit and respectability. There were ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... Adams and Partridge; of lower and more farcical, but still admirable comedy in Slipslop and Trulliber and Squire Western; of comedy almost romantic and certainly charming in Sophia; of domestic drama in Amelia; of satiric portraiture in a hundred figures from the cousins (respectable and disreputable), Miss Western and Lady Bellaston, downwards. He stocked it with infinite miscellanies of personage, and scene, and picture, and phrase. As has happened in ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury

... feature"; though 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 is ...
— English literary criticism • Various

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

... step, recalled all the conversation 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

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

... Highness Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, this faint portraiture of a truly wise, valiant, and virtuous commander as the possessor of the like noble qualities is, with the most profound respect and veneration, inscribed by His Royal Highness' most obedient and most devoted ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... 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 ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury

... monarch, and was knighted by him for his brave conduct at 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 ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 204, September 24, 1853 • Various

... Scotland 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 ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers

... on the margin of a copy of the Diary: "Truly may it be said that this was a greater and more grievous loss to the mind's eye of posterity than to the bodily organs of Pepys himself. It makes me restless and discontented to think what a Diary equal in minuteness and truth of portraiture to the preceding from 1669 to 1688 or 1690 would have been for the true causes, process and character ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys

... success of his life, but who would with her own willing hands help achieve it. And so while father plowed the fields, and threshed the wheat, and broke the flax, and husked the corn, my mother stood for Solomon's portraiture, when he said, 'She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household. She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. She is not afraid of the snow for her household, for all her household are clothed with scarlet. Her children arise up and call ...
— Forty Years in South China - The Life of Rev. John Van Nest Talmage, D.D. • Rev. John Gerardus Fagg

... facts which had horrified Lesley were no novelties to her. She was, in truth, slightly angry that her innocent Lesley should have so much of the great city's misery and shame laid bare to her. She acknowledged the truth of the portraiture, the beauty of the descriptions, the eloquence of the author's appeals to the higher classes; but she acknowledged it with resentment. Why had Caspar written a book of this sort? a book that taunted the higher classes with their birth, and reproached the wealthy ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... many people were at their devotions, thronging principally around the Virgin's shrine. I was struck now with the many bas-reliefs and busts in the costume of their respective ages, and seemingly with great accuracy of portraiture, in the passage leading from the front of the church into the cloisters. The marble was not at all abashed nor degraded by being made to assume the guise of the mediaeval furred robe, or the close-fitting tunic with elaborate ruff, or the breastplate and gorget, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... comparing Polybius himself with the style in which Livy uses, expands, and abridges his annals in those periods of which Polybius' account has been preserved. Johannes von Mueller, in the endeavor to remain faithful in his portraiture to the times he describes, has given a stiff, formal, pedantic aspect to his history. We much prefer the narratives we find in old Tschudi; all is more naive and natural than when appearing in the garb of a fictitious and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various

... 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 ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous

... usual disadvantages of choosing a leading character that is off the lines of heroic portraiture is that the author may seem to be in sympathy with a base part in life and with base opinions. In this novel I run a different risk. I shall not be surprised if I provoke some hostility in making the bad man justify his course by the gaunt and ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... the first development of art in America and it led to the working of metals, followed by drawing and portraiture. Among the Americans, as soon as that term ceased to mean Indians, art took a most distracting turn. Europe was old in pictures, great and beautiful, when America was worshipping at the shrine of the chromo; but the chromo served a good turn, bad as it was. It was a link between ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon

... beyond the Rubicon of contemporaneous portraiture, for very obvious reasons; but there are still in existence abundant means of verifying, or correcting, every sketch. I have endeavored to give the consciousness of this fact its full weight—to resist the temptation (which, I must admit, was sometimes strong) to touch the borders of satire; ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel

... until after the death of his Majesty George III. It was not therefore published until 1848, when they were edited by Mr. Croker. They are referred to both by Horace Walpole, who had heard of them, if he had not seen them, and by Lord Hailes, as affording the most intimate portraiture of a court that has ever been presented to the English people. Such a delineation as Lord Hervey has left ought to cause a sentiment of thankfulness in every British heart for not being exposed to such influences, to such examples ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton

... a workman, or a workgirl is artistically of far more value than all the imaginary sketches of impossible dukes and good and wicked baronets in which so many English novels abound. Several of M. Zola's personages seem to me extremely lifelike—Gavard, indeed, is a chef-d'oeuvre of portraiture: I have known many men like him; and no one who lived in Paris under the Empire can deny the accuracy with which the author has delineated his hero Florent, the dreamy and hapless revolutionary caught in the toils of others. In ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... also of 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 and magnitude overthrown and ruined by machines; with the strongest fortifications ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... Ode good enough? I half think so.) But my great point 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 warship; you will ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... many curious particulars relating to the life of that unfortunate Prince, which are no where else to be found. In delineating the character of Charles, he seems dispassionate and impartial, and indeed it agrees perfectly with the general portraiture of him, as it is drawn ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... children in it needs "The Nursery" for their profit and delight; and every childless house needs it for the sweet portraiture it gives of ...
— The Nursery, No. 169, January, 1881, Vol. XXIX - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... rhetorical color here and there, and it is at times too diffuse; but its substantial accuracy is not 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 ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner

... 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 ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... For the most part they consisted of copies of illustrations which I had cut from magazines that had miraculously found their way into the violent ward. The heads of men and women interested me most, for I had decided to take up portraiture. At first I was content to draw in black and white, but I soon procured some colors and from that time on devoted my ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... individualizing of each artist are so unobtrusively epitomized and vitally blended, that, while scarcely any item of specific study of the art and artists of the Renaissance would be out of place in illustrating the essential truth of the portraiture and assisting in the better appreciation of the poem, there is no detail of the workmanship which does not fall into the background as a mere accessory to the dominant figure through whose relationship to his art his station in the past ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning

... 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

... unvarnished portraiture and the stoical fortitude exhibited by him in face of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various

... 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 ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... name of Segrais, one finds the touch of an artist, and the subtle intuitions of a woman. In the rapid evolution of modern taste and the hopeless piling up of books, these works have fallen somewhat into the shade, but they are written with a vivid naturalness of style, a truth of portraiture, and a delicacy of sentiment, that commend them still to all lovers of imaginative literature. Fontenelle read the "Princesse de Cleves" four times when it appeared. La Harpe said it was "the first romance that offered reasonable ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... Each picture is painted with a vigor and point of realistic detail that are peculiar to our own time; painted to-day, Bonnat's fine and sculptural "Fellah Woman and Child," of the Metropolitan Museum, would be accented in a dozen ways in which now it is not. But it is perhaps in portraiture that the eminence of these painters is most explicit. They are at the head of contemporary portraitists, at all events. And their portraits are almost defiantly real, void often of arrangement, and ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... 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 a possible undervaluing of ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... "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 ...
— Frank Reynolds, R.I. • A.E. Johnson

... 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 background, ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater

... 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 World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton

... treat to me of the highest order. The matter and manner of the dialogue is strictly ancient; the principles of the sects are beautifully and candidly explained and contrasted; and the scenery and portraiture of the interlocutors are of higher finish than any thing in that line left us by the ancients; and like Ossian, if not ancient, it is equal to the best morsels of antiquity. I augur, from this instance, that ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... 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

... circumstances of Scholasticism, its awakened intellect, its famishing eagerness from defect of books, its gloom from the exile of all feminine graces, and its towering participation in an interest the grandest of the age, as a sort of camera obscura for bringing down on the table before us a portraiture essentially the same of early Greek society in the rapturous ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... the reason Rembrandt, who lived at the same time Shakespeare lived, is today without a rival in portraiture. He had the courage to make an enemy. When at work he never thought of any one but his Other Self, and so he infused soul into every canvas. The limpid eyes look down into yours from the walls and tell of love, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... unsuccessfully prosecuting before Congress a claim which is just, but in some respects irregular. These ruined suitors, threadbare and slipshod, begging or borrowing their daily bread, recall Charles Dickens' portraiture of the Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce Chancery suite, which had become so complicated that no one alive knew what it meant. The French spoilation claims that were being vigorously prosecuted in 1827 are yet undetermined ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... 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 ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... subjects, (not in the artistical sense so treated,) which attract great attention. "The Queen receiving the Sacrament," by Leslie; and "Waterloo," by Sir W. Allan, R.A. We are aware of the great value of this manner of pageant painting; it is perhaps worth while to sacrifice much of art to portraiture in this case. Viewing the necessity and the difficulty, we cannot but congratulate Mr Leslie—notwithstanding the peculiarity of the dresses, and the quantity of white to be introduced, this is by no means an unpleasantly coloured picture. There is much richness, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

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

... 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 ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... 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 of ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton

... afraid to sail under her own proper colors hereafter, claims that most of the incidents are taken from real life; a very creditable averment, as the work, with slight modifications in each individual case, would prove a faithful portraiture of the early training and subsequent career of nine-tenths of the victims of the gallows, and of the penitentiary.—Mirror, ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various

... going to say, my dear boy, is an extraordinary woman. It was from her originally that the Pilgrim first learnt to call the female the practical animal. He studies us all, you know. The Pilgrim's Scrip is the abstract portraiture of his surrounding relatives. Well, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... life, the festive scenes of past times, the never to be forgotten pleasures of his halcyon days, when youth, and health, and fortune, blest his lot, he has no tongue for scandal—no pen for malice—no revenge to gratify, but is only desirous of attempting a true portraiture of men and manners, in the higher and more polished scenes of life. If, in the journey through these hitherto unexplored regions of fancy, ought should cross his path that might give pain to worthy bosoms, he would sooner turn aside ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle

... a passage which one would say was obviously inspired by that gorgeous description of the jungle in The Research Magnificent. Mr. BARKER has enough matter for two (or three) novels and enough skill in portraiture to make them more coherent and plausible than this. The theme is old but freshly seen. Tom Seton, resolved to avoid risking for his beloved the unhappiness which his mother had found in the bondage of marriage, offers her—indeed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 4th, 1920 • Various

... important element in the portraiture of human forms or natural scenery, so the ground on which the life and labors of Jonas Webb should be sketched, merits a few preliminary lines. Of all the occupations that employ and sustain the toiling myriads of our race, agriculture leans closest ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt

... Charleston, was blown in pieces with her own powder, being twenty-one barrels, wherein the judgment of God appeared, "for the master and company were many of them profane scoffers at us and at the ordinances of religion here." Without any effort at dramatic portraiture or character sketching, Winthrop managed in all simplicity, and by the plain relation of facts, to leave a clear impression of many of the prominent figures in the first Massachusetts immigration. In particular there gradually arises from the entries in his diary a very distinct and diverting ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... Theophrastus dealt 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 ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... to this. The refined symbolisms which pass current to day as religious philosophies exemplify it. The one, esthetic symbolism, has its field in musical and architectural art, in the study and portraiture of the beautiful; the other, scientific symbolism, claims to discover in the morphology of organisms, in the harmonic laws of physics, and in the processes of the dialectic, the proof that symbolism, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton

... 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 this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... "are thought out by different methods, and explained by diverse expressions, it may be by a sentence, an argument, a metaphor or some other figure, a parallel, a simple comparison, a complete fact, a single feature, by description, or by portraiture." His book contains all these, and his style corresponds with the variety of matter and method—a style, as Voltaire justly characterises it, rapid, concise, nervous, picturesque. "Among all the different modes in which a single thought may be expressed," wrote La Bruyere, "only ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden

... authority that kirk, which the Lord hath fashioned by the uncounterfeited work of his own new creation, as the prophet speaketh, He hath made us, and not we ourselves; but that that ye should presume to fashion and shape a new portraiture of a kirk, and a new form of divine service which God in his word hath not before allowed; because, that were you to extend your authority farther than the calling ye have of God doth permit, as namely, if ye should (as God forbid) ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie

... vast proportions of the subject, we have wandered far from the range of Mr. Morley's work, which has a special purpose with well-defined limits. It is not a complete biography of Rousseau, much less a history of his times. It gives no full or vivid portraiture of character, no adequate narrative of events, no summary even of results. It is an analytical study, an examination of the life and works of Rousseau with a view to determine their precise nature and quality, rather than their relative value or bearings. Within these limits it exhibits ample ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... proposition that in art history has no value of its own as such; for the poet is a part of life that is, and his nature and career, like that of any character or event in history, have no artistic value beyond their universal significance. In such self-portraiture there may be sometimes the depicting of a depraved nature, such as Villon; but such a type takes its place with other criminal types of the imagination, and belongs with them ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... hand. Colour, for which he possessed so true an aptitude, the deep, fused colour of Giorgione, is set aside by him; his tints become strong and crude, his surfaces grow hard and polished, and he thinks, above all, of bold action, of drawing and modelling. The Venetian genius for portraiture remains, and he has left such fine examples as the "Andrea Doria" of the Vatican, or the "Portrait of a Man in the Pitti," a masterly picture both in drawing and execution, with grand draperies, a fur pelisse, and damask ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps

... of this crisis in Harriet Martineau's History of the Thirty Years' Peace, i., 355-66, deserves to be studied and remembered as a masterpiece of social portraiture by a contemporary. ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... and are left without the remotest idea of his personality. It is not so here. The man lives again. There is a short description of Johnson's person—it is not in the Life, but in the Tour to the Hebrides, the very next book upon the shelf, which is typical of his vivid portraiture. May I take it down, and read you ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... "may be great art. There is a sense, indeed, in which it is perhaps the greatest art of any. Any portraiture involves expression. Quite true, but expression of what? Of a passion, an emotion, a mood? Certainly not. Paint a man or woman with the damned 'pleasing expression,' or even the 'charmingly spontaneous' so dear to the 'photographic artist,' and you see at once that the thing is a mask, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie

... mountaineer dialect occurs naturally in an American story, it often gives telling effects of local color and of shading. But the negro or 'cracker' story per se can be made bearable only by the pen of a master; and even then it may be very doubtful if that same pen had not proved keener in portraiture, more just to human nature in the main, had the negro or the 'cracker' been the mere episode, acting on the main theme, and ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett

... Ashe's arrival and all eyes, to his great discomfort, were turned in his direction. His embarrassment was relieved by Mrs. Twemlow, who advanced to do the honors. Of Mrs. Twemlow little need be attempted in the way of pen portraiture beyond the statement that she went as harmoniously with Mr. Beach as one of a pair of vases or one of a brace of pheasants goes with its fellow. She had the same appearance of imminent apoplexy, the same air of belonging ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

... Jacob, and with David more than with Moses, who is none the less the grandest typical Israelite in the Old Testament. And, indeed, Virgil's theme here is less the development of a character or the portraiture of a hero than the idealisation of the people of the Italy which he loved so well, who needed only a divinely guided leader and civiliser to enter upon the glorious career that was ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

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

... have been considering this eminent person as yet only in his public capacity, as a benefactor of mankind by his fertile genius and indomitable perseverance; and the best portraiture of his intellectual character was to be found in the description of his attainments. It is, however, proper to survey him also in private life. He was unexceptionable in all its relations; and as his activity was unmeasured, and his taste anything rather ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie

... bliss He bare below! tent this man, as 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

... ever went into that room without knocking. It never entered any one's head to burst in unannounced. The door was an unimposing-looking piece of deal, grained by some village artist into the portraiture of an as yet undiscovered kind of wood, and considerably impaired in various ways by time. It could not have been the door, therefore. Nor was the bolt ever drawn, save at certain hours of the morning and night. Sophie was not an ogre, either. Cornelia, who was very trying at times, would have ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... of our late sovereign lord King Edward the Third, who hath been dead these ten years. 'Tis a riddle to find where the stroke doth begin and where it doth also end. To him who first shall show it unto me will I give the portraiture." ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney

... 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... HOMERIC AGE.—(1) Government. In the Homeric portraiture of Greek life, there are towns; but the tribe is predominant over the town. The tribe is ruled by a king, who is not like an Eastern despot, but has about him a council of chiefs, and is bound by the themistes, the traditional customs. There is, besides, the agora, or popular assembly, ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... sympathies either in himself, or in those for whom he painted. His larger sacred subjects are merely themes for the exhibition of pictorial rhetoric,—composition and color. His minor works are generally made subordinate to purposes of portraiture. The Madonna in the church of the Frari is a mere lay figure, introduced to form a link of connection between the portraits of various members of the Pesaro family ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... chamber saw we hinging the cardinals oune portraiture to the full, in his ride robes and his cardinals hat wt a letter in his hand to tel that he was the Kings secretary: his name is beneath. Armandus Richeleus anagrammatized Hercules alter. Surely the portrait ...
— Publications of the Scottish History Society, Vol. 36 • Sir John Lauder

... of this terrific conflict, 'the portraiture of two men of the largest volume,' was cut in the turf on the Hoe at an early date, and was only destroyed when the Citadel ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... God's justice. So these others, Chidiock here, Donne and Salisbury, always 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 cruelly deceived ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge

... invisible. This ere the 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... 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 Memoirs she is generally ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... "twelves" and of the "seventies" may lack one or other of these characteristics. In most cases, however, you may safely bestow them all; and if it be the chief of the sect—the President himself—you may add such other ugly appellatives as your fancy may suggest; and be sure that your portraiture will still fall short of the hideousness of the original. Perhaps the most striking characteristic of these fanatics is the absolute openness of their cheat. A more commonplace imposture has never been offered for acceptance, even to the most ignorant of mankind. It appeals neither to reason nor ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... of epistolary writing, either in England or France. His correspondence extends over a period of more than fifty years, and no subject of general interest seems to have escaped his attention and curiosity. He not Only gives a faithful portraiture of the manners of the times, particularly of the highest circles of society in which he lived; but he presents us with many striking sketches of various events and occurrences, illustrating the political history of this country during the latter part of the last century. If any proof were required ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... 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 ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... individuality. The pose is simple and majestic, as befitting the portrait of an Emperor. The bust of the young Augustus in the Vatican for depth of expression, individuality, truth to nature, and delicacy of finish and treatment, is a marvel in portraiture. ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... Hide me from day's garish eye, While the bee with honey'd thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring, With such consort as they keep Entice the dewy-feather'd Sleep. And let some strange mysterious dream Wave at his wings in aery stream Of lively portraiture display'd, Softly on my eyelids laid: And, as I wake, sweet music breathe Above, about, or underneath, Sent by some spirit to mortals good, Or the unseen Genius of the wood. But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... perpetual delight; as you unfold 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. And now the ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley

... 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

... church was rebuilt. The north chapel, or aisle, containing the tombs of the Mavesyns and the Ridwares, the ancient lords of the estates which descended to Mr. Chadwick, was preserved; and here are to be seen two cross-legged effigies, a curious incised portraiture on an altar-tomb, representing Sir Robert Mavesyn, 1403, with other incised slabs and interesting memorials; to which were added, by Mr. Chadwick, a series of large incised figures, which surround the chapel. These last ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various

... 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 ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... 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 philosophy of the ante-revolutionary ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... "Kean" is not quite so sublime; it was brought out by the author as a satire upon the French critics, who, to their credit be it spoken, had generally attacked him, and was intended by him, and received by the public, as a faithful portraiture of English manners. As such, it merits special observation and praise. In the first act you find a Countess and an Ambassadress, whose conversation relates purely to the great actor. All the ladies in London are in love with him, especially the two present. As for the Ambassadress, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... poem, world without end. Hostilities were now fairly established. Pope issued a fresh edition of his satire complete. The change he had long coveted he now made. The name of Cibber was substituted throughout for that of Theobald, the portraiture remaining the same. Johnson properly ridicules the absurdity of leaving the heavy traits of Theobald on the canvas, and simply affixing the name of his mercurial contemporary beneath; and, indeed, there is much reason to doubt whether the mean jealousy which inspired the first "Dunciad," ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... productions. Whatever affects national character and destiny, whatever accounts for national manners or confirms individual sway, is brought into the record. Diaries, like those of Pepys and Evelyn, the tithe-book of a county, the taste in portraiture, the costume and the play-bill yield authentic hints not less than the census, the parliamentary edicts, or the royal signatures; the popular poem, the social favorite, the cause celebre, what pulpit, bar, peasant and beau, doctor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various

... it—it dazzles me still. It dazzles me perhaps even more in remembrance than in fact, for I'm not unaware that for so rare a subject the imagination goes to some expense, inserting a jewel here and there or giving a twist to a plume. How the art of portraiture would rejoice in this figure if the art of portraiture had only the canvas! Nature, in truth, had largely rounded it, and if memory, hovering about it, sometimes holds her breath, this is because the voice that ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James

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

... 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 ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.



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



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