"Sitter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... end of half an hour he said she was a very good sitter and this pleased her, and she tried to keep the pose till the clock struck, but at the end of fifty minutes she said: "I must get up," and she came round to see what ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... upon the simplicity and solid humanity of this central type, the heavy-armed and disciplined infantry about which are grouped the more gifted and erratic types, the scouts and light-horse of civilization. For these general reasons Samuel Johnson seems to us the best sitter for a literary portrait that ever fell into the hands of a literary painter, and the excellence of his biography to depend quite as much upon the fact that it is a life of Samuel Johnson as upon the fact that it is a life ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... customs. Neither chairs nor bedsteads existed; people sat and slept on the floor, separated from it only by mats made of rice-straw, by cushions or by woollen carpets, and in aristocratic houses there was a kind of stool to support the arm of the sitter, a lectern, and a dais for sitting on. Viands were served on tables a few inches high, and people sat while eating. From the middle of the seventh century a clepsydra of Chinese origin was used to ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... the players follow. Then one of the sitting children clasps his unoccupied left hand upon the upraised thumb of his companion, thus raising the height of the barrier by the width of the palm. The line starts again and all jump this. Then the second sitter adds his palm and thumb to the barrier, and the line of players attack this. It is more than likely that some one will fail to clear this last barrier, and the one who does so squats down, pressing close to the other two, and puts in his grimy little ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... surroundings. He never left us in doubt either as to the time or the place; and the same obligations of time and place, which Hals never shirked, seem to me to rest on the painter, if he elects to paint his sitter in any attitude ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... man being seated in a chair, man and chair were lifted up by the fair performer placing her hands against the sides. To substantiate the claim that she herself exerted no force, chair and man were lifted without her touching the chair at all. The sitter was asked to put his hands under the chair; the performer put her hands around and under his in such a way that it was impossible for her to exert any force on the chair except through his hands. The chair at once lifted ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... sit to her for his portrait; and, under cover of artistic enthusiasm, told him his beard was godlike, and nothing in the world could equal it for beauty. She never saw but one at all like it, poor Mr. Seaton's; but even that was very inferior to his. And then she dismissed the sitter. "Poor thing," said she, "you are pale and tired." And she began to use ornaments; took her bracelets out of her bag, and picked pearls out of her walls, and made a coronet, under which her eyes flashed ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... "private parlour" at the Clarendon Hotel, then the latest thing in hotels, but whose ancient corner of Fourth Avenue and—was it Eighteenth Street?—long ago ceased to know it; the gentle, very gentle, portraitist was Mr. Eyre Crowe and the obliging sitter my father, who sat in response to Mr. Thackeray's desire that his protege should find employment. The protector after a little departed, blessing the business, which took the form of a small full-length of the model seated, his arm extended and the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... (Michael Trent) on his return to England after the failure of his rubber schemes. The best he could hope for, by way of consolation for being misunderstood, was to become a co-respondent in a suit brought by the chief sitter-in-judgment. Even so we might have contrived a little sympathy if the woman's fifth-rate environment had not made any community of tastes hopelessly improbable. For her, too, it seemed to us a poor business that the only encouragement ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 30, 1914 • Various
... My cousin Robert Breck had old Benjamin's portrait, which has since gone to the Kinley's. Heaven knows who painted it, though no great art were needed to suggest on canvas the tough fabric of that sitter, who was more Irish than Scotch. The heavy stick he holds might, with a slight stretch of the imagination, be a blackthorn; his head looks capable of withstanding many blows; his hand of giving many. And, as I gazed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... journalist a leading article, with a hat on? The thing is impossible. Would any man who respected himself, or the feelings of his family and friends, consent to have his portrait painted with the offensive article upon his cranium? It would be almost a proof of insanity, both in the sitter who should insist upon, and the artist who should lend himself to, the perpetration of such an atrocity. We have but to fancy one out of the thousand statues of bronze or marble which it is proposed to erect to the memory of Sir Robert Peel in our great towns and cities, surmounted with a hat ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... you going to fasten that seat so it won't let the sitter down on the floor?" inquired Ethel Blue, as James explained what he was going ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... portrait painting, yet by no means undervaluing or slurring over his work. He 'would detain the persons who sat to him to dinner for an opportunity of studying their countenances and re-touching their pictures,' 'would have a sitter, sitting to him seven entire days, mornings and evenings, and would not once let the man see the picture till it pleased the painter.' Van Dyck appears to have been a man with the possibilities in him of greater things than he ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... thought Frederick's theory rather a rough one at first, she saw how he worked it out into continual production of kindness in fact. After a bad night with his mother (for he insisted on taking his turn as a sitter-up) he was busy next morning before breakfast, contriving a leg-rest for Dixon, who was beginning to feel the fatigues of watching. At breakfast-time, he interested Mr. Hale with vivid, graphic, rattling accounts of the wild life he had led in Mexico, South America, and ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... watch—it at least had been her mother's—and the final day was already an hour old. But Alexander Minchin was a late sitter, as his young wife knew to her cost, and to-night he had told her where he meant to sleep, but she had not heard him come up. The room would have been the back drawing-room in the majority of such houses, and Rachel peeped in on her way down. It was empty; moreover, ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... knob of oak. Indeed, throughout his face there was something of the knobbed and gnarled character of that monarch of our woods. I will add, that as this picture was painted immediately after Cromwell's accession to the sovereign power, the princely aspect of the sitter was never more genuine, perhaps, than at that moment. But there was one thing which Lely assuredly took upon himself to qualify; to wit, the redness of the nose. It was too red in ordinary, though not so much so as his libellers gave out, nor ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 534 - 18 Feb 1832 • Various
... history of Dives these old benches could have told! What troopers, and beggars, and cowled monks, and wayfarers had sat there!—each sitter helping to wear away the wood till it had come to have the depressions of a drinking-trough. Night after night in the long centuries, as the darkness fell upon the hamlet—what tales and confidences, and what murmured anguish of remorse, what cries for ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... day that would make an ample provision for the advent of half a dozen unexpected visitors to the studio. He would have to do his best with afternoon sittings, Elfrida was not available in the morning; and he thought compassionately that his sitter must not be starved. "I will feed her first," he thought ironically, remembering her keen childish enjoyment of sugared things. "She will pose all the better for some tea." And he walked on to ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... public monument. We see he would have other aspects; and that they would all be the aspects of a beggar. Even if one did not admit the extraordinary qualities in the painting, one would have to admit the ordinary qualities in the sitter. If it is not a masterpiece it is a man. But a nocturne by Whistler of mist on the Thames is either a masterpiece or it is nothing; it is either a nocturne or a nightmare of childish nonsense. Made in a certain mood, viewed through a certain temperament, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... and comminatory progress to admit gladly that in such societies are to be found plenty of talent and of what is much rarer, sincerity. Here are men who take art seriously; here are men who have no prospective sitter, no rich patron, no terrible drawing-master in mind; here are men to whom painting is the most important thing in the world. Unfortunately, in their isolation they are apt, like the rest, to come on the parish. Theirs is no vulgar ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... song of a nest, For it is not long:— You shall never light in a summer quest The bushes among— Shall never light on a prouder sitter, A fairer nestful, nor ever know A softer sound than their tender twitter, That ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... of the sitter by a sort of stand at the back, which holds it steady in one position while the camera takes the picture. In life most people have their heads fixed in the claws of some miserable pettiness, which interests them so greatly that they tramp on steadily forward, staring ahead, and there's not ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... name of Dunstable, the girl accountant in the distance had also moved sharply, so as to look at the young man. But in the bustle of Madame Vavasour's entrance, and her passage to the sitter's chair, the girl's ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... liar on top of everything else, Good Saint? Good to see me, indeed! 'From such a face and form as mine, the noblest sentiments sound like the black utterances of a depraved imagination.' No, dear old holy pillar-sitter, no indeed! It may be a pleasure to hear my mellifluous voice—a pleasure I often indulge in, myself—but it couldn't possibly be a pleasure to see me!" And all the while, St. Simon was being pummeled heartily on the shoulder, while his hand was pumped ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... disturb them, the sight of a man will not frighten them away. I was determined to get a good portrait of some of them, and accordingly took my sketch-book and pencil, and seated myself very near to one of them, and began my operations, feeling sure I had now got a most patient sitter, for they will lie for weeks together without stirring; but I had to keep throwing small pebbles at him, in order to make him open his eyes, and prevent his going to sleep. The flies appear to torment these unwieldy monsters ...
— The Book of Enterprise and Adventure - Being an Excitement to Reading. For Young People. A New and Condensed Edition. • Anonymous
... level of portraiture. There is far less of that moody abstraction which awakens our interest in most of his portraits, but much greater objective truth, arising from that perfect sympathy between artist and sitter, which is of the first importance in portrait-painting. History tells us of the friendly encouragement the young Castelfrancan received at the hands of this gracious lady, and he doubtless painted this likeness of her in ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... portrait he had put something more of his sitter than usual. He had painted the soul of the girl in the body of the woman of thirty, and if he rendered his subject in a manner more stilted than usual, he repaid her in the real interest with which her portrait was invested. He ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... after due manipulation of the proper instrument. "Glorious trio of departed statesmen!" thought Jewett, "help us by your counsels in this the day of our nation's great distress." Next Henry Clay's outline was faintly shown from the tomb, and here the sitter remarked that he expected him. After him came Stephen A. Douglas, and the whole affair was so entirely satisfactory to Jewett, that, after paying fifty dollars for what he had witnessed, he, the next day, implored the presence of George ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... interest in the movement even begets an unconscious desire to help it, which at times almost rises to a curious semi-conscious self-deception, a voluntary exaggeration of the marvellous. Yet nothing makes the ordinary sitter angrier than to be told he has helped to move the table. It is as though he were accused of cheating at whist, or worse, of playing a foolish card. Take half a dozen persons at random, and there are sure to be ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... a fortnight later accompanied by Haydon, who was to become the guest of his sitter, {47a} and George was left to the compilation of Celebrated Trials. Sir Richard Phillips appears to have been a man as prolific of suggestion as he was destitute of tact. He regarded his authors as the instruments of his own genius. Their business it was to carry out his ideas ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... all like me; my expression is more unhappy.'" West, the American, who five years later painted his lordship at Leghorn, substantiates the above half-satirical anecdote, by the remark, "He was a bad sitter; he assumed a countenance that did not belong to him, as though he were thinking of a frontispiece for Chlde Harold." Thorwaldsen's bust, the first cast of which was sent to Hobhouse, and pronounced by Mrs. Leigh to be the best of the numerous likenesses of her brother, was often ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... full rein to imagination and have retold it in my own way. It deals with the old law—the old border days—therefore it is better first. Soon, perchance, I shall have the pleasure of writing of the border of to-day, which in Joe Sitter's laconic speech, "Shore is 'most as bad an' ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... artist who is said to use photography. It is even said that he has his sitter photographed on to the canvas, and the photographic foundation he then covers up with those dreadful browns and ochres which seem to constitute his palette. Report credits him with this method, which it is possible he believes to be an advance on the laborious process ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... said the Missourian, gravely eying the old man—"yes, it is pitiless in one like me to speak too honestly to one like you. You are a late sitter-up in this life; past man's usual bed-time; and truth, though with some it makes a wholesome breakfast, proves to all a supper too hearty. Hearty food, taken late, gives ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... case, as the doctor sees it, is just exactly such a collection of paltry individual facts as never was before,—a snarl and tangle of special conditions which it is his business to wind as much thread out of as he can. It is a good deal as when a painter goes to take the portrait of any sitter who happens to send for him. He has seen just such noses and just such eyes and just such mouths, but he never saw exactly such a face before, and his business is with that and no other person's,—with the features of the worthy father of a family ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... answered in all gradations, from gentle and hospitable kindness to downright brutality." Further promises and assurances are given, and in July, as we learn from a letter of Southey's, the good Matilda was still high in hopes that her sitter would eventually sit. Her hopes could not have come from Southey, who had none. "You would have found him the most wonderful man living in conversation, but the most impracticable one for a painter, and had you begun the picture it is ten thousand ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... recent introduction of high-art methods into photography has done much to diminish the unpleasantness of the operation. In the old days of crude and direct posing, there was no escape for the sitter. He had to stand up, backed by a rustic stile and a flabby canvas sheet covered with exotic trees, glaring straight into the camera. To prevent any eleventh-hour retreat, a sort of spiky thing was shoved firmly ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... added, that the spirit was about to say that Ostend was not the place. I said "Pshaw! In that way he might go through the whole Gazetteer." Thereupon Mr. Hume declared that I was evidently not in a fit frame of mind to be a sitter at such meetings; that my presence would be likely to mar any results to be expected from them; and, in short, if only for the sake of those who wished to continue their experiences, it was necessary that I should withdraw from them. That ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... looking out upon you with inimitable innocence, and apparently under the impression that he is in a room by himself. For Raeburn could plunge at once through all the constraint and embarrassment of the sitter, and present the face, clear, open, and intelligent as at the most disengaged moments. This is best seen in portraits where the sitter is represented in some appropriate action: Neil Gow with his fiddle, Doctor Spens shooting an arrow, or Lord Bannatyne ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... have walked like a lamb by the friend, by the friend, That stuck to my skirts like a burr; I have borne the stale talk without end, without end, Of the sitter whom nothing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... next over nothing much happened, except that Miss Debenham missed a sitter. Subsequently Simpson caught her eye from another part of the field, and explained telegraphically to her how she should have drawn her hands in to receive the ball. The third over ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... perfectly obscure little person to make him do what he did. There must have been something." His eyes travelled to a sketch in pencil of a man's head which hung in the shadow of the chimneypiece, a sketch whose uncanny suggestion might have come from the quality of the sitter or merely from a smudging of the medium. "Everything he did always seemed to me perfectly natural," he went on, as though conscious of new discovery. "Even those years when he was knocking about the world, hiding his address. Even when he ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... say nothing," and he made ready for his sitter the next day, by turning two or three studies of the nude, which might have shocked her, with their faces ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... execute a picture. But neither case would be identical in principle with mine. The artist and the mathematician would both have executed in their sleep what they had laid the foundation of when awake. I, on the other hand, would, should I transfer my aerial sitter to canvas, simply paint what I saw when wide awake, just as in undertaking to reproduce any other face from memory, whether observed once for twenty seconds or frequently ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... pen-portrait, and being from the hand of one who knew his sitter, should be considered a ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... another. I was tempted to follow their example, as I feared that the little village of Hundwyl would be crowded. But there was still time to claim private hospitality, even if this should be the case, so we marched steadily down the valley. The Sitter, a stream fed by the Sentis, now roared below us, between high, rocky walls, which are spanned by an iron bridge, two hundred feet above the water. The roads of Outer-Rhoden, built and kept in order by the people, are most admirable. This little population of forty-eight ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... and satisfactions of the soul. Winter naturally has found less favour with the poets than the other seasons. Praise of it has usually a strained air, as though the poet were making the best of a barren theme, like a portrait-painter reluctantly flattering some unattractive sitter. But one poet has seen and seized the mysterious beauty of winter with unforced sympathy—Coventry Patmore, whose "Odes," in particular, containing as they do some of the most rarely spiritual meditation ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... and a bustling human sympathy, and power of carrying things through. Or take two names often found in conjunction—Johnson and Boswell. Had the dear great oracle been named Boswell, and had the sitter-at-his-feet been named Johnson, would the two names seem to us less appropriate than they do? Should we suffer any greater loss than if Salmon were Gluckstein, and Gluckstein Salmon? Finally, take a case in which the same name was borne by two very different ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... of his willow. "How the small hours brighten us up!" He drew the curtains and displayed a window like a child's slate with the sashes ruled across it. "You perceive how we have tired the stars with talking, and cleaned them from the sky! The mellifluous Heraclitus can have been no sitter up o' nights, or his pal wouldn't have boasted about tiring the sun by our methods. What a lot the two ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... paint a signboard which should proclaim to the passer-by the name and nature of the Society. My offer was accepted, and the Board was sent down to my studio, where I treated it as I should a most distinguished sitter—as a picture or an etching—throwing my artistic soul into the Board, which gradually became a Board no longer, as it grew into a picture. You say they say it was only a butterfly. Mendacity could go no further. ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... and solid magnificence of the mahogany furnishings, the leather-covered chairs, the big purposeful desk. Above the old-fashioned marble mantel hung a life-sized portrait in oils of Inglesby himself. The artist had done his sitter stern justice—one might call the result retribution; and one wondered if Inglesby realized how immensely revealing it was. There he sat, solid, successful, informed with a sort of brutal egotism that never gives quarter. In despite of a malevolent determination to look pleasant, his smile ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... the arms being carved to resemble running lions, and the lower supports being prisoners of war, bound back to back (fig. 270). A foot-board in front served as a step to mount by, and as a foot-stool for the sitter. Up to the present time, we have found no specimens ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... simultaneously for different colours during the eclipse of a fixed star by its dark neighbour. By means of similar considerations based on observa- tions of double stars, the Dutch astronomer De Sitter was also able to show that the velocity of propagation of light cannot depend on the velocity of motion of the body emitting the light. The assumption that this velocity of propagation is dependent on the direction "in space" is ...
— Relativity: The Special and General Theory • Albert Einstein
... Phillips, R.A., painted his portrait. He was a restless sitter until the painter remarked: "I have always heard, Mr. Borrow, that the Persian is a very fine language; is it so?" "It is, Phillips; it is." "Perhaps you will not mind reciting me something in the Persian tongue?" said Phillips. "Dear me, no; certainly not." ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... was little of a psychologist. His patrons belonged to that social class in which reserve is a test of breeding and thoughts and emotions are sedulously concealed. To penetrate the mask of the face and interpret the character of his sitter was an office he seldom took upon himself to perform. Yet he was capable of profound character study, especially in the portrayal of men. Even in so early a work as the so-called portrait of Richardot and his son, he revealed decided talent in this ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... possible, and in order to do this, it is necessary to present the figure in such a position as to bring it as nearly as possible upon the same plane by making all parts nearly at equal distance from the lenses. This must be done by the sitter inclining the head and bust formed to a natural, easy position, and placing the hands closely to the body, thus preserving a propel proportion, and giving a lively familiarity to the general impression. It is not an uncommon fault among our less experienced operators to give a front ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... no portraits of the sixteenth century provide so fascinating a series of riddles. Yet in deciphering them it is very necessary to take into account the peculiar temperament of the painter himself, as well as the physical and mental characteristics of the sitter and the atmosphere of ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... or stockings, and sandals laced to the feet and legs by leather thongs. The tunic of the chief was elaborately embroidered on the breast in silk, a winged black horse being the central and most conspicuous design. The trophy hanging at the back of the sitter's chair consisted of a small circular shield, with a formidable axe, double-handed sword, and mace crossing each other, behind it, the whole being surmounted by a handsome bronze headpiece, or helmet without a visor, having a large pair of finely modelled wings starting from the sides and ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... can always do any pane of his window that he likes, separately from the rest. Thus, you see, here is one of Sir Joshua's first sittings: the head is very nearly done with the first color; a piece of background is put in round it: his sitter has had a pretty silver brooch on, which Reynolds, having done as much as he chose to the face for that time, paints quietly in its place below, leaving the dress between to be fitted in afterwards; and he puts a little patch of the yellow ...
— Lectures on Landscape - Delivered at Oxford in Lent Term, 1871 • John Ruskin
... whose shadow darkened the doorway, he rose in haste, and standing with his hand upon the arm of the chair, waited for his father to seat himself in it. The laird acknowledged his attention with a smile, sat down, and looked like the last sitter grown suddenly old. He put out his hand to the boy across the low arm of the chair, and the boy laid his hand in his father's, and so they remained, neither saying a word. The laird leaned back, and ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Rev. John Norton, in his sketch of John Cotton, remarks that "the hen, which brings not forth without uncessant sitting night and day, is an apt emblem of students." Certainly the hen is an apt emblem of the "uncessant" sitter, the credulous scratcher, the fussy cackler who produced ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... higher world: namely, God Who is above all, and incomprehensible to any creature. Hence no likeness of Him was set up; to denote His invisibility. But there was something to represent his seat; since, to wit, the creature, which is beneath God, as the seat under the sitter, is comprehensible. Again in that higher world there are spiritual substances called angels. These are signified by the two cherubim, looking one towards the other, to show that they are at peace with one another, according to Job 25:2: "Who maketh peace in ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... competent portraitist at work? The infinite pains a skilled man spends on the preliminaries before he takes one step towards a likeness nearly always wears down the patience of the sitter. He measures with his eye, he plumbs, he sketches tentatively, he places in here a dab, there a blotch, he puts behind him apparently unproductive hours—and then all at once he is ready to begin something that will not have to be done over again. An amateur, ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... of the clouds that menaced her sitter—"take this pad an' write a question on it. Don't lemme see it, mind! When you got it all wrote out, fold it up tight an' hold it against your forehead. Never leggo ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... virtues and of the most astounding political genius crowned by the highest destinies." David, the artist, once a member of the Convention and a regicide, then an Imperialist, painted the portrait of Pius VII., and the Moniteur in the number of March 30, 1805, thus praised the picture and the sitter. "A large crowd gathered in the gallery of the Senate, to see the portrait of His Holiness by M. David, member of the Institute and first painter to the Emperor. This portrait is in every way worthy of the master's reputation. If the first essential in a portrait is an exact likeness, this one ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... through the air and a small table moved as if it were alive. Many other mysterious movements took place. Lombroso was very much disturbed by these inexplicable phenomena, and could not rest till he sat again. At the second seance spectral hands developed, profoundly mystifying every sitter, and Lombroso went away, promising to carry forward a study of spiritism. In a letter written the following June he manfully said: 'I am filled with confusion, and regret that I combated with so much persistence the possibilities of the facts called spiritualistic. I say facts, ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... him," said Jane. "My belief is that I missed him. Though how I came to do it beats me. I don't suppose I've missed a sitter like that since I was a child in the nursery. Of course," she proceeded, looking on the reasonable side, "the visibility wasn't good, and I fired from the hip, but it's no use saying I oughtn't at least to have winged him, because I ought." She shook her head with a touch of self-reproach. ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... they may be styled lords, as is the Scottish custom," said James the Gross, "even as when I was laird of Balvany and a sitter on the bed of justice, it was my right ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... happily characterised a face, than that of this resolute, self-contained young patrician with the curly chestnut hair and the short, fine beard and moustache—a personage high of rank, doubtless, notwithstanding the studied simplicity of his dress. Because we know nothing of the sitter, and there is in his pose and general aspect nothing sensational, this masterpiece is, if not precisely not less celebrated among connoisseurs, at any rate less popular with the larger public, than it deserves ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... to my friend, would be the greatest literary portrait ever painted, and what he asked of me was just to be so good as not to trouble him with questions till he should hang up his masterpiece before me. He did me the honour to declare that, putting aside the great sitter himself, all aloft in his indifference, I was individually the connoisseur he was most working for. I was therefore to be a good boy and not try to peep under the curtain before the show was ready: I should enjoy it all the more if I sat ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... hundred people sat up all night, in and about a Yorkshire inn, to see the Duchess of Hamilton get into her postchaise in the morning, while a Worcester shoemaker made money by showing the shoe he was making for the Countess of Coventry." Sir Joshua declared that whenever a new sitter came to him, even till the last years of his life, he always began his portrait with the determination that that one should be the best he had ever painted. Success was bound to attend that sort ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... Street, Portman Square; and there, on September 27, Tennyson read his new poem, 'Maud', to Mrs. Browning, while Rossetti, the only other person present besides the family, privately drew his likeness in pen and ink. The likeness has become well known; the unconscious sitter must also, by this time, be acquainted with it; but Miss Browning thinks no one except herself, who was near Rossetti at the table, was at the moment aware of its being made. All eyes must have been turned towards Tennyson, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Mr. Scogan, Denis climbed the little ladder and stepped over the threshold. He looked suspiciously from Gombauld to his sitter, and could learn nothing from the expression of their faces except that they both seemed pleased to see the visitors. Were they really glad, or were they cunningly ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... have several of that stamp) who like to tease other people's understandings as wool-combers tease wool. He is certainly the flower of the flock. He is the oldest frequenter of the place, the latest sitter-up, well-informed, inobtrusive, and that sturdy old English character, a lover of truth and justice. I never knew Mounsey approve of anything unfair or illiberal. There is a candour and uprightness about his mind which can neither be wheedled nor browbeat into unjustifiable ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... kindly word— (For when I said we got a Second I really meant we got a Third)— The games we played were often tinged with bitter, Amidst the damns no faintest hint of praise Greeted us when we missed the authentic "sitter"— But thou wert ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... presented by the society, figured over the mantel-piece. The village Van Dyck would seem to have invested largely in carmine, and though far from parsimonious of it on the cheeks and the nose of his sitter, he was driven to work off some of his superabundant stock on the cravat, and even the hands, which, though amicably crossed in front of the white-waistcoated stomach, are fearfully suggestive of some recent deed ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... plumb, and some idea of the general dilapidation may be gathered from the fact that, one day, while my companion stood on the station platform, drawing a picture of this scene, a brick chimney, a portrait of which he had just completed, softly collapsed before our eyes, for all the world like a sitter who, having held a pose too long, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... him as yet. The topic that suggested itself was naturally that most closely connected with the motive of the artist's visit. Lyon remarked that it was a great disadvantage to him not to have had some preliminary acquaintance with Sir David—in most cases he found that so important. But the present sitter was so far advanced in life that there was doubtless no time to lose. 'Oh, I can tell you all about him,' said Mr. Ashmore; and for half an hour he told him a good deal. It was very interesting as well as very eulogistic, and Lyon could see that he was a very nice old man, to have ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... those of the Chinese women, to see out of their corners. She well knew how to manage a soft, insinuating voice, which threw a tender charm into every word, even such as she merely chanced to utter; her feet were like those we see in portraits where the painter boldly lies and flatters his sitter in the only way which does not compromise anatomy. Her complexion, a little yellow by day, like that of most brunettes, was dazzling at night under the wax candles, which brought out the brilliancy of her black hair and eyes. Her ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... the existence of this portrait is perhaps not known, mention of the fact might interest some of your readers. The picture, including frame, is perhaps in size thirty inches by twenty-four; and the age of the sitter, whose features are delineated with remarkable effects is ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 186, May 21, 1853 • Various
... three piglings were stolen from one of our pig-pens. The great Lafaele appeared to my wife uneasy, so she engaged him in conversation on the subject, and played upon him the following engaging trick: You advance your two forefingers towards the sitter's eyes; he closes them, whereupon you substitute (on his eyelids) the fore and middle fingers of the left hand, and with your right (which he supposes engaged) you tap him on the head and back. When you let him open his eyes, he sees you withdrawing the two forefingers. 'What that?' ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... been promised a sight of it just as soon as it arrived from the photographer's. I confess I had not been sanguine as to the result, although I knew a handsome portrait was confidently expected by the sitter. One morning he deposited the photograph ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... and sitter Of really first-rate quality. Though rival fowls are enviously bitter, That doth not bate her jollity. Her duties CAQUET BONBEC'S game to tackle, Without ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... to have no power to follow the general example, but remained the only sitter in the entire congregation with my eyes, nay, all my senses, fixed, rivetted upon the preacher. This, of course, attracted his attention. I saw him look towards me with surprise, then he started, his voice hesitated for a moment, but he almost immediately ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Marryat
... existence, not in all the history of portrait realization either by the camera or in painting, which so definitely present, and in many instances with an almost haunting clairvoyance, the actualities existing in the sitter's mind and body and soul. These portraits are for me without parallel therefore in this particular. And I make bold with another assertion, that from our modern point of view the Stieglitz photographs are undeniable works of art, as are also the fine photographs of the younger men like Charles ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... speer'd he: What men be ye then of them that have war-gear, With byrnies bewarded, who the keel high up-builded Over the Lake-street thus have come leading. Hither o'er holm-ways hieing in ring-stem? 240 End-sitter was I, a-holding the sea-ward, That the land of the Dane-folk none of the loathly Faring with ship-horde ever might scathe it. None yet have been seeking more openly hither Of shield-havers than ye, and ye of the leave-word Of the framers of war naught at all wotting, Or the manners of kinsmen. ...
— The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats • Anonymous
... was the interest we all felt in the result of this struggle, that our feelings during the battle could not be compared to it. I could see Marble move his body, as a sitter in a boat is apt to do, at each jerk of the oars, under the notion it helps the party along. Diogenes actually called out, and this a dozen times at least, to encourage the men to pull for their lives, though they were not yet within a ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... estimate, it was found that the repairs would cost about a thousand pounds; and by the plan, that the seats, at eighteen pence a sitter, would yield better than a hundred pounds a-year; so that there was no scruple, on the part of the town-council, in borrowing the money wanted. This was the first public debt ever contracted by the corporation, and people were very fain to get their money lodged at five per ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... amused to be irritated. She was such a friendly little soul and so obviously devoted to Ruth that he felt she was entitled to be a nuisance as a sitter. He wondered more and more what weird principle of selection had been at work to bring Bailey and this butterfly together. He had never given any deep thought to the study of his brother-in-law's character; but, from his small knowledge of him, he would have imagined ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... dress of dull blue, which, artist-wise, she had chosen as her professional garb, and in which she herself made a picture to be observed with enjoyment, moved deftly about the room arranging her lights and shadows. This done, she turned to her sitter. When she came in he had been standing before a set of prints upon the wall, studying them critically, but from the moment of her entrance he had been watching her, though he held a photograph in his hand with which he might have seemed ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... repose Unmixed the stream of motive flows, A flavor of its many springs, The tints of earth and sky it brings; In the still waters needs must be Some shade of human sympathy; And here, in its accustomed place, I look on memory's dearest face; The blind by-sitter guesseth not What shadow haunts that vacant spot; No eyes save mine alone can see The love wherewith it welcomes me! And still, with those alone my kin, In doubt and weakness, want and sin, I bow my head, my heart I bare As when that face was living there, And ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... fireside, where the easy-chair was drawn cosily up, and the tea-things stood ready to the sitter's elbow, the very sugar in the cup. There were several books on a shelf; one lay beside the tea-things open, and Utterson was amazed to find it a copy of a pious work, for which Jekyll had several times expressed a great esteem, annotated, in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for him, he, perhaps wisely for his fame, reduced the number of his ordinary sitters, receiving none until afternoon. The picturing of what he termed "her divine beauty" became a passion with him; and the enthusiasm of the sitter was nearly as great as that of the painter, and she enacted his classic conceptions. The result is a superb series of pictures of faultless female form, and loveliness of feature. Of the model's immoral career we have naught now to do. Here is perpetual beauty, and ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... by no means true, but Lady Ogram had always been a bad sitter to the camera, and had destroyed most of its results. The oil painting in the dining-room she regarded with a moderate complacency. Many a time during the latter years of withering and enfeeblement her memory had turned to that shining head in marble, which was hidden ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing
... than of Dr. Jekyll in their composition. It used to be admitted that, when 'possessed,' Mrs. Piper would cheat when she could—that is to say, she would make guesses, try to worm information out of her sitter, describe a friend of his, alive or dead, as 'Ed.,' who may be Edgar, Edmund, Edward, Edith, or anybody. She would shuffle, and repeat what she had picked up in a former sitting with the same person; and the vast majority of ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... time he sat for his picture to Mr. West, an American artist, who has himself given, in one of our periodical publications, the following account of his noble sitter:— ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... him in twenty dollars a day. So that, in the course of a fortnight, our adventurers found themselves comparatively rich men. This was satisfactory, and Ned admitted as much one morning to Tom, as he sat on a three-legged stool in his studio—i.e. a dilapidated log-hut—preparing for a sitter, while the latter was busily engaged in concluding his morning repast of ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... force; Watts has exalted this conception to a higher level and has portrayed the thinker whom the world will honour many centuries hence. Some will perhaps prefer the more objective treatment; and it is certain that Watts's ambition led him into difficult paths. Striving to represent the soul of his sitter, he was conscious at times that he failed—that he could not see or realize what he was searching for. More than once he abandoned a commission when he felt this uncertainty in himself. But when the ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... been carried to the bed in the inner chamber, all remained as it had been found. There were no signs of robbery—not even of a struggle. The cushions of the easy-chair still bore the impress of the sitter's weight; the footstool was hardly pushed aside; the massive library table was undisturbed; the silver spoons and sugar-tongs beside the tumbler and plate on the supper tray; the yellow light of the lamp still burnt; not a paper was ruffled, not a drawer ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... like a stone. It was too obvious that he had stayed at home, not to be with her, but merely because his sitter ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... portrait of MR. LLOYD GEORGE is not shared by everybody. The following criticism of the picture has reached us, and as it represents a point of view which, so far as we know, has not found sympathy in the Press opinions which have already appeared, we print it for the edification of the artist, the sitter and any others who may have a few moments to devote to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 22, 1916 • Various
... the life in the forest on which he set out. They would have been surprised to be told that Old Phelps owned more of what makes the value of the Adirondacks than all of them put together, but it was true. This woodsman, this trapper, this hunter, this fisherman, this sitter on a log, and philosopher, was the real proprietor of the region over which he was ready to guide the stranger. It is true that he had not a monopoly of its geography or its topography (though his knowledge was superior in these ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... so like them that a hundred years from now no one will believe in them. The only portraits in which one believes are portraits where there is very little of the sitter, and a very great deal of the artist. Holbein's drawings of the men and women of his time impress us with a sense of their absolute reality. But this is simply because Holbein compelled life to accept his conditions, ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... (Query, How do persons with only one eye judge?), so, in short or medium distances, it were better to let the camera radiate from its centre to the principal object to be delineated. The result of this must be error, as the following illustration will show. Let the sitter (for it is especially recommended in portraits) hold before him, horizontally, and in parallelism with the picture, a ruler two feet long; and let planes parallel to the ruler pass through the sitter's ears, eyes, nose, &c. The consequence would ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... we searched after he was gone, we could never find the tobacco. Such were the diversions of Uncle Parker, a man nearing sixty. But he was punished according unto his deeds: Mrs. Stevenson took a fancy to paint him, and the sufferings of the sitter were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... AEschylus that they run amok among their contemporaries with something of the furious destructiveness of Don Quixote on his adventures. It is the noble intolerance of youth; but how unreasonable it is! Suppose a portrait-painter were suddenly to take his sitter by the throat on the ground that he had no right to exist. One would say to him that that was not his business: his business is to take the man's existence for granted, and to paint him until he becomes in a new sense alive. If he is worthless, paint his worthlessness, but ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... and cannot resume the thread; but considering how much of his own conceit the artist puts into a portrait, how much affectation the sitter puts on, and then again that no face is the same to any two spectators; also, that these portraits are darkened and faded with age, and can seldom be more than half seen, being hung too high, or somehow or other inconvenient, on the whole, I question whether there is much use ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... attention, any in steadfast gazing, any in passes of the hand hither and thither—if there be any magic in ce doux demi-jour so loved in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and feathered, in freedom of admiration, "and all in the way of business"—then is a lovable sitter to a love-like painter in "parlous" vicinity (as the new school would phrase it) to sweet heart-land! Pleasure in a vocation has no offset in political economy as honor has ("the more honor the less profit"), or portrait-painters would be poorer ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... could not see into the nest, for there was no building high enough to overlook it, but I could see the bird when he stood upon the edge. Sitting, in a warm climate, is not particularly close work. Although the weather was cool, yet when the sun was out the sitter left her nest from six to eight minutes at a time, and as often as once in twenty minutes. Of course in rain she had not so much liberty, and on some days left only when her mate was ready to take her place, ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... painting, the picture was elaborately like the sitter. The pointed oval of the face had been faithfully drawn, and its straight nose and small brown eyes were set characteristically in the head. Remembering a photograph of his daughter, Mr. Innes fetched it from the other end of the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... moment in my career. A very influential sitter of mine—you remember the fat lady with the crimson curtain behind her?—had come to the conclusion or been persuaded that I had painted her old and vulgar, which, in fact, she was. Her whole clique had turned ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... Tormes; bad man &c 949; blackguard &c 949; barrater^, barrator^; shyster [U.S.]. traitor, betrayer, archtraitor^, conspirator, Judas, Catiline; reptile, serpent, snake in the grass, wolf in sheep's clothing, sneak, Jerry Sneak, squealer [Slang], tell-tale, mischief-maker; trimmer, fence-sitter, renegade &c (tergiversation) 607; truant, recreant; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... a three-quarter face is better that a Full; for one reason, that I think the Sitter feels more at ease looking somewhat away, rather than direct at the luminous Machine. This will suit you, who have a finely turned Head, which is finely placed on Neck and Shoulders. But, as your Eyes are fine also, don't ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... barrator[obs3]; shyster [U.S..]. traitor, betrayer, archtraitor[obs3], conspirator, Judas, Catiline; reptile, serpent, snake in the grass, wolf in sheep's clothing, sneak, Jerry Sneak, squealer*, tell-tale, mischief-maker; trimmer, fence-sitter, renegade &c. (tergiversation) 607; truant, recreant; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... creating, and the distinct glory and delight of reproducing features so beloved; and to these joys were added the pleasure of larger conversation. The model gave Grace many opportunities of making remarks, or asking questions, and Henry contrived to say so many things in answer to one. Sculptor and sitter made acquaintance with each other's minds over the ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... of who the sitter is, and secondly because of what she is. She is, of course, the most famous subject I've had, and half the artistic world knows by this time that Marguerite Winthrop is being done by Henshaw. You can see what it'll ...
— Miss Billy's Decision • Eleanor H. Porter
... portrait painter, was sometimes annoyed by impertinent and vexatious criticism. Having exhausted all his talent upon a particular portrait, the friends of the sitter refused to be pleased, although the sitter himself appears to have been well satisfied. In concert with the latter, Ranc concerted a plan for a practical retort. After privately painting a copy of the picture, he cut the head out of the canvas, and placed it in such ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... and consistent sitter-out, Auntie is. And you know that face of hers ain't exactly the chirky sort. Don't encourage you to get chummy, or tip her the confidential wink, or chuck her under the chin. Nothing ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... entertainments, and the large gardens, or small park, whichever you like to call it, which surrounded the house, afforded plenty of sitting-out room. No one who shared in the parties will ever forget the long and good talks on the lawn on which the wicker chairs were set with brightly coloured rugs for the sitter's feet. Guests worthy of that honour were taken through the orchid house by Mr. Chamberlain himself, for his knowledge and love of his favourite flower was no pose, but ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Ibrahim the Basket-maker.' Then I asked her, 'What of thee?' and she answered, 'It is now four years since there appeared to me the Manifest Truth, and He is the Relator and the Ally, and the Uniter and the Sitter-by; whereupon my folk looked askance upon me with an evil eye and taxed me with insanity and suspected me of depravity, and there came not in to me doctor but terrified me, nor visitor but confounded me.' Quoth I, 'And who led thee ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... with the Sword of the Sitter on the horse, (The Conquering Christ,) which sword proceeded out of His mouth." "He speaks and it ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... temperance from the lowest depths. Netherton was always the twelfth man to arrive, and nothing could be done till he was safely settled. Only some six inches were reserved at the end of the bench, and he was a full sitter, but he had discovered a trick of sitting sideways and screwing his leg against the opposite wall, that secured the court as well as himself in their places on the principle of a compressed spring. When this operation was completed, Burnbrae used to ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... more portraits to paint, I'm sorry, for I shall not try to do any. I'm not fit for that kind of work. I don't say it because I despise the work, but because I despise myself. I should always let some wretched preoccupation of my own—some fancy, some whim—come between me and what I see my sitter to be, ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... reality of my friend is what he essentially is, what he is of the spirit. A photograph of a man registers certain facts of his appearance at that moment. The eye and the mind of the artist discern the truth which underlies the surface; the artist feels his sitter not as a face and a figure, a mere body, but as a personality; and ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... acquire information. He liked to discuss any man's profession with him, and in his talks with Flagg he made a sincere effort to get that insight which would enable him to appreciate the old masters. Flagg found him a tractable sitter, and a most interesting one. Once he paid him a compliment, then apologized for ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... slow approaches herself, Euphemia was a great sitter at the feet of breathless volubility, and there were moments when she fairly hung upon the lips of Mademoiselle Marie de Mauves. Her intimacy with this chosen schoolmate was founded on the perception—all her own—that their differences were just the right ones. Mademoiselle de Mauves was very ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... class above them, was that they differed from cattle in stipulating for seats. With the exception of that provision to suit their weakness, the accommodation extended to them resembled pens, and the seats were emphatically seats of penitence, intended to grind the sitter for his mean pittance payment and absence of aspiration to a higher state. Hard angular wood, a low roof, a shabby square of window aloof, demanding of him to quit the seat he insisted on having, if he would indulge in views of the passing scenery,—such was the furniture ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... consented to paint Sir Jee's portrait on his usual conditions; namely, that the sitter should go to the little village in Bedfordshire where Cressage had his principal studio, and that the painting should be exhibited at the Royal Academy before being shown anywhere else. (Cressage was an R.A., but no one thought of putting R.A. after his name. He was ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... to hear her and, a masculine friend coming to claim his dance, seized the opportunity to escape. However, another "sitter out" supplied the information. ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... are fond of sitting in chairs tilted against the wall, as we sometimes do at home. Indeed they go beyond us in this respect; for in Cuba they have invented a kind of chair which, by lowering the back and raising the knees, places the sitter precisely in the posture he would take if he sat in a chair leaning backward against a wall. It is a luxurious attitude, I must own, and I do not wonder that it is a favorite with lazy people, for it relieves one of all the trouble of keeping ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... Pontornini, then living at Tournon, a few miles distant. To this friendship we owe the first authentic portrait of Buonaparte. It exhibits a striking profile with a well-shaped mouth, and the expression of gravity is remarkable in a sitter so young. The face portrays a studious mind. Even during the months from November to April he had not entirely deserted his favorite studies, and again Rousseau had been their companion and guide. In a little study of Corsica, dated the twenty-sixth of April, 1786, the earliest of his manuscript ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... forward in time from the Swedish physician relating his impressions in the seventeenth century, to an American in the eighteenth century delivering his opinions on Japan and the Japanese as viewed from the American standpoint at that period. "The sitter is the same, and, what is more, he sits on his heels to-day just as his grandfather did to Thunberg, yet it is hard to see any points of resemblance—a lesson to all theologians and politicians who still indulge the dreams that uniformity ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... I could not understand. It seemed they were telling that their men of knowledge had found time to be a mere measurement, or dimension, just as length or breadth or thickness. They mentioned names with reverence that I had never heard—Einstein and De Sitter and Lorentz. I was in a maze ...
— The Man Who Saw the Future • Edmond Hamilton
... is of course supposed to be the same as the sitter, but quite apart from the metaphysical difficulties of such a supposition, there is the physical difficulty when the writer is an old man, and the model is a young boy. Is the old man likely to be a fair judge of the young man, whether it be himself or some one else? As a rule, old men ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... first time I found myself seated on a sitter's throne, while Wilkinson stood at his modelling stand working away at a mass of clay that faintly suggested a human ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 22, 1914 • Various
... the help of her glass, the well-known whale-boat sweeping round the ship's stern, and rowing swiftly towards the shore. A deep blush announced that the glass had also informed her who was, in midshipman's language, the "sitter," the person in the stern-sheets, to wit, and she immediately proposed returning to the house. Morton, on landing, informed her that the ship would get under weigh the next morning at day-break, and that it would be most advisable, as the ship could approach no ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... borrowed another, but finding me deaf to his arguments, went away in a pet. Meanwhile my gain advanced to six pieces, and my desire of more increased in proportion: so that I moved to the higher table, where I laid half-a-guinea on every throw, and fortune still favouring me, I became a sitter, in which capacity I remained until it was broad day; when I found myself, after many vicissitudes, one hundred and fifty ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... ever gratifying. See how my TALK AND TALKERS went; every one liked his own portrait, and shrieked about other people's; so it will be with yours. If you are the least true to the essential, the sitter will be pleased; very likely not his friends, and that ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Rembrandt painted the famous "Night Watch," a picture representing the company of Francis Banning Cocq, and incidentally a day scene in spite of its popular name. The work succeeded in arousing a storm of indignation, for every sitter wanted to have equal prominence in the canvas. They had subscribed equally to the cost, and Rembrandt had dared to compose ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels
... the days of road travelling departed, and Viney, who, beneath the Grecian-columned portico of his country-house-looking hotel, modulated the ovations of his cauliflower head to every description of traveller—from the lordly occupant of the barouche-and-four, down to the humble sitter in a gig—was cut off by one fell swoop from all further traffic. He was extinguished like a gaslight, and the pipe was laid on a ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... inscription assert—above the signature, the name of the sitter and the date 14th ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... of portraits of members of the Academy of St. Luke, most of whom, judging by their physiognomies, were very commonplace people; a fact which makes itself visible in a portrait, however much the painter may try to flatter his sitter. Several of the pictures by Titian, Paul Veronese, and other artists, now exhibited in the gallery, were formerly kept in a secret cabinet in the Capitol, being considered of a too voluptuous character for the public eye. I did not think them noticeably ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... stranger. The only living thing that entered now was a sparrow; and seeing no movements to cause alarm, he hopped boldly round the room, endeavoured to go out by the window, and fluttered among the pot-flowers. This roused the lonely sitter, who got up, released the bird, and went to the door. She was expecting Thomasin, who had written the night before to state that the time had come when she would wish to have the money, and that she would if ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... had been exhibited at the Grafton Galleries under the name of The Gilded Lily. No one had ever known or was ever likely to know whether the title referred to the decorative, if botanically impossible, blossom in her hand, or to the golden hair of the seductive sitter. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... a-flutter upon the top of a holiday fir in a sudden gust of wind, threw open the door, rushed halfway into the room, and stopped beside the chair of her aunt. Her hands dropped to the plump shoulder of the sitter. "Aunt Phoebe, there's a man down at the farther end of the strawberry patch! He's got a gun, Aunt Phoebe, and he's camped there, and when he heard me he jumped up and pointed the ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower |
