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Work of art   /wərk əv ɑrt/   Listen
Work of art

noun
1.
Art that is a product of one of the fine arts (especially a painting or sculpture of artistic merit).






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Work of art" Quotes from Famous Books



... details of visual observation in art is liable eventually to obscure the main idea and disturb the large sense of design on which so much of the imaginative appeal of a work of art depends. The large amount of new visual knowledge that the naturalistic movements of the nineteenth century brought to light is particularly liable at this time to obscure the simpler and more primitive qualities on which all good art is built. At the height of that movement line drawing went ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed

... know how much that bust cost me? . . . Fifteen thousand francs. I got it from Balzac, who owed me a great deal of money. Once when I was at his house in Passy, he exclaimed: 'Since I can't pay you, take what you like from here to reimburse yourself.'" This work of art, a Louis XVI. gilt-bronze time piece, with its two candelabra, once also in Balzac's possession, was part payment of the balance due to the de Berny family, and was surrendered only in ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... work of art, "The Scarlet Letter" is perhaps not so excellent as the author's subsequent books. It may not unjustly be called a novel without a plot, so far as this touches the adroit succession of incidents and the ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop

... will find abundance of interesting and amusing information in the volume. As a work of art, it possesses very ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... wooden shield, on which was painted a heart transfixed by a dart, a device better suited to his taste and comprehension. In the subsequent troubles of Milan, Leonardo's picture disappeared, and was probably destroyed as an object of horror by those who did not understand its value as a work of art. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various

... go about the town, And make my neighbours' matters my sole care, Seeing my own are damaged past repair. Once I was anxious on a bronze to light Where Sisyphus had washed his feet at night; Each work of art I criticized and classed, Called this ill chiselled, that too roughly cast; Prized that at fifty thousand: then I knew To buy at profit grounds and houses too, With a sure instinct: till the whole town o'er "The pet of Mercury" ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace

... will outrage a promising bit of narrative for the sake of keeping to the facts. Imbecile! the facts are given you, like the block of marble or the elements of a landscape, as material for the construction of a work of art. Which would you rather be, a photographer or Michael Angelo? "Non vero ma ben trovato" should be your motto; and if you refuse to kill your heroine on the Saturday night because, forsooth, she really ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... sanitary arrangements there and in India, and had finally worked his way slowly home, overland, visiting Egypt and Palestine, and refreshing his memory with every Italian, German, or French Cathedral, or work of art, that had delighted him in ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... rigidities of which as a mere man he was less capable. And during all this companionable month he never quite lost that feeling with which he had set out on the first day as if to visit an adored work of art, a well-nigh impersonal desire. The future—inexorable pendant to the present he took care not to face, for fear of breaking up his untroubled manner; but he made plans to renew this time in places still ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... not quite agree with this opinion. I should say, rather, that literature resembles painting in being one of the fine arts, and that when a book, like a picture, is a fine work of art, it has a great chance ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... brutes! Let me up! You've nearly cut my knees off. Oh, you are beastly cads! Do shut up. 'Tisn't a joke!" Beetle's protest was, in tone, a work of art. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... Midway Pleasance in connection with the thing. Mrs. Cedarquist and our friend Hartrath 'got up a subscription' to construct a figure of California—heroic size—out of dried apricots. I assure you," he remarked With prodigious gravity, "it is a real work of art and quite a 'feature' of the Fair. Well, good luck to you, Pres. Write to me from Honolulu, and bon voyage. My respects to the hungry Hindoo. Tell him 'we're coming, Father Abraham, a hundred thousand ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... 'you can't be serious. It is a beautiful and imposing work of art—at any rate one is getting accustomed to it, and even if one doesn't happen to admire it one can always look in another direction. But imagine what life would be like if one saw that erection confronting one wherever one went. Imagine the effect ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki

... remember that first salad you made us, Colin?" I said, as we sat over our coffee, and Colin was filling his little pipe. "A daring work of art, a fantastic tour de force, of apples, and lettuce, and wild strawberries, and I ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne

... seen in the older saloons of Damascus: the inscriptions are usually religious sentences, extracts from the Koran, etc., in uncial characters. They take the place of our frescos; and, as a work of art, are ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... second part of "Faust" the magic spell was completely broken. No work of Art of a more chilling, disenchanting character was ever produced. For the striking individuality of the first part, we have here nothing but abstractions; for its deep poetry, symbolism; for its glow and thrilling pathos, a plastic finish, hard and cold as marble; for its psychological ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... he had carved into the semblance of a monkey. "Sweet creature!" he added, kissing the object of his affection, and holding it out at arm's-length. "Silent companion of my solitary rambles, and patient auditor of my most secret aspirations, you are becoming quite a work of art. A few more touches of the knife, and something like perfection shall have been attained! Look here, Dick, when I turn it towards the light—so—isn't there a beauty about the contour of that upper lip ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne

... also, how many desillusions had she not experienced in a few hours? How had her heart been cooled by the rich flow of words in Corilla's poesy! Her whole soul had languished for the acquaintance of a poetess, and she had heard only a rhymed work of art. And then the last terrible event! Why had they wished to murder her? Who were her unknown enemies, and why had ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... casualities worth enumeratin', we found ourselves in that glorious Court of Honor, and pretty nigh that gorgeous fountain of MacMonnies. This matchless work of art occupies the place of honor amidst the incomparable group of wonders in that Court of Honor, and it deserves it. Yes, indeed! its size is immense, but it don't show it, owin' to the size of ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... one" was in love with her. Not only the bachelors of the family, that was a matter of course, but artists and amateurs, even the most blase, swarmed round her, la jeunesse doree (which is homely enough in Norway), without an exception. A living work of art, worth more or less money, piquante and admired, how each longed to carry her home, to gloat over her, to ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... knew that my most gracious lord would take pleasure in this glorious work of art," said Master Gabriel Nietzel, smiling, "and therefore have I spared neither expense, toil, nor danger in bringing to your excellency this noble painting of ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... of this exquisite work of art seems entirely wanton and unnecessary. It produced no result whatever of advantage. There were neither English, French, nor Belgian soldiers in Ypres at the time. The populace consisted of about ten thousand peaceful peasants and ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards

... Women are far more responsive to such things than men, who are ordinarily quite as devoid of aesthetic sensitiveness as so many oxen. The attitude of the typical man toward beauty in its various forms is, in fact, an attitude of suspicion and hostility. He does not regard a work of art as merely inert and stupid; he regards it as, in some indefinable way, positively offensive. He sees the artist as a professional voluptuary and scoundrel, and would no more trust him in his household than he would trust a coloured clergyman in his hen-yard. It was men, and ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken

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

... feels equal to this effort,—and enough remains to make it a very possible one—he had better stick to the Royal Academy and Grosvenor Exhibitions. It should go without saying that a work of art, if considered at all, must be held to be as it was when first completed. If we could see Gaudenzio Ferrari's Crucifixion Chapel with its marvellous frescoes as strong and fresh in colour as they ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... "There is another work of art connected with this wonderful mechanism," said the count, after Marie had rolled and unrolled the screen several times. "The cord which releases the screen rings a bell in my room. When I hear the bell I shall know that you have retired; then I shall bring my books and papers ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai

... something indescribably horrible in this deliberate, merciless destruction of the exquisite work of art. Nan, watching the keen blade sweep again and again across the painted figure of the portrait, felt as though the blows were being rained upon her actual body. Distraught with the violence and horror of the scene she tried to scream, but her voice ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler

... words of their preaching, there were thousands who came to admire the production of their skill. Moreover, Huss, who perfectly understood the object of their attempt, and entirely coincided with it, made frequent reference to their work of art in his discourses. In a word, the seed was sown; and but a little while elapsed ere the plant sprang up ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... I have never managed to produce on my palette. And naturally, the crepine, the small sausages, the chitterlings, and the crumbed trotters provided me with delicate greys and browns. I produced a perfect work of art. I took the dishes, the plates, the pans, and the jars, and arranged the different colours; and I devised a wonderful picture of still life, with subtle scales of tints leading up to brilliant flashes of colour. The red tongues ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... at the church of San Andrea delle Fratte. Instead of waiting in the carriage, I entered the church myself to look at it. The church of San Andrea was poor, small, and empty; I believe that I found myself there almost alone. No work of art attracted my attention; and I passed my eyes mechanically over its interior without being arrested by any particular thought. I can only remember an entirely black dog which went trotting and turning before me as I mused. In an instant the dog had disappeared, the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James

... however great his plastic skill, can hope to mould and shape a work of art to suit his fancy, unless the stuff on which he works be first prepared and made ready to obey the craftsman's will. Nor certainly where the raw material consists of men, will you succeed, unless, under God's blessing, these same men have been prepared and made ready to meet their officer in a friendly ...
— The Cavalry General • Xenophon

... might be quite useless; a duplicate will open the lock. A counterpart exactly corresponds to another object, but perhaps without design, while a copy is intentional. An imitation is always thought of as inferior to the original; as, an imitation of Milton. A replica is a copy of a work of art by the maker of the original. In law, a copy of an instrument has in itself no authority; the signatures, as well as other matters, may be copied; a duplicate is really an original, containing the same provisions and signed by the same persons, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald

... drums, some of which were in the shape of a barrel, both in their length and in being bulged out at the middle. On the ends were painted gay pictures of men and women clad in battle-array or festive garments, making the drum a work of art as well as an instrument of torture to those who are disturbed by noises about ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland

... work of art, we repeat, this is beyond question the finest instance of line-engraving yet executed on this continent. Free from carelessness or coarseness, it is yet strong and emphatic; exquisitely finished, yet without painful over-elaboration; with no weary monotony of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... End; to the left the roar and labour, the craft and gold, of the City. For themselves, they are the only monument in this vast capital worthy of a second visit as a monument. Over the entire area covered by the metropolis there does not exist another work of art in the open air. There are many structures and things, no other art. The outlines of the great animals, the bold curves and firm touches of the master hand, the deep indents, as it were, of his thumb on ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... flourished, and probably six hundred years after Homer sung his immortal epics. After more than two thousand years the style of this great "Father of History" is admired by every critic; while his history, as a work of art, is still a study and a marvel. It is difficult to understand why no anterior work in prose is worthy of note, since the Greeks had attained a high civilization two hundred years before he appeared, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... it off proudly. "Work of art," he said. "I made one just like it when I was here the summer I was twelve—I remembered it this morning when I woke up, and I came out to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... crepe de chine and lace, folded tightly and tied with a ribbon into a package not over a foot square. A comb and a brush of old ivory, which had set in its back a small mirror held in by a silver band, which father had purchased in Florence for me under a museum guaranty as a genuine Cellini work of art, were wrapped in a silk case, and a toothbrush and soap had occupied their respective oil-silk cases along with a tube of tooth paste and one of cold cream. Two pairs of soft, but strong, tan cotton stockings were tucked underneath the ribbon confining ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess

... even a measure which is to form part of a code, should be a work of art—unequivocal in language, consistent in its logic, and luminous in its arrangement. Like other works of art, therefore, it must be essentially the product of a single mind. It is as impossible, as Fitzjames often repeats, for a number of people to make a code as for a number ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen

... between master and worker (compayne, Geselle), existed but in the medieval cities from their very beginnings; this was at the outset a mere difference of age and skill, not of wealth and power. After a seven years' apprenticeship, and after having proved his knowledge and capacities by a work of art, the apprentice became a master himself. And only much later, in the sixteenth century, after the royal power had destroy ed the city and the craft organization, was it possible to become master in virtue of simple inheritance or wealth. But this ...
— Mutual Aid • P. Kropotkin

... never have clasped her in my arms, or have shown any further amorous desires to her than what the deference I all along paid her could give her room to surmise. Nay, I can affirm that I did not even then know that the covering she wore was not the work of art, but the work of nature, for I really took it for silk; though it must be premised that I had never seen it by any other light than of my lamp. Indeed the modesty of her carriage and sweetness of her behaviour to me had struck into me such a dread of offending her, that though nothing ...
— Life And Adventures Of Peter Wilkins, Vol. I. (of II.) • Robert Paltock

... day: carved on a pine board which had served for a bier was the face of Tabby, surrounded with devices intended to represent the duration of her virtues. His work consoled Columbia, and inspired him to a more ambitious enterprise, namely, the carving of the same in a block of gypsum, which work of art Dexter obtaining sight of declared that it would have done credit to an artist, and set it on his mantel-shelf between two precious household cards lettered in gilt as follows "Union is Strength," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... few lines, which the king read with utter astonishment. "Vraiment!" he exclaimed; "philosophers all belong to the devil. This Jean Jacques does not content himself with declining my offer, but he does it in an unheard-of manner. This is a work of art; I must ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach

... shears I have a personal fancy for the French, hand-made instrument, each one individual, a work of art and a potential legacy to one's horticultural heir, if one doesn't let the village blacksmith monkey with it, as I did ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various

... stickler for commonplace colours or conventional shapes in a work of art, but I do like things to be recognisable; to know, for instance, when a thing is meant to be a man and when it is meant to be a boat, and when it is meant to be a pookin and when it is meant to be a sun. The art of Priscilla seems to me to satisfy ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 7th, 1920 • Various

... reality, any one who saw me at the exhibition on varnishing-day.... Who? Well, Eddy Breckenridge, for instance. He was in Egypt, you say? Perhaps he was! As if one could remember the people about one, when suddenly one comes upon a great work of art, as St. Paul did—didn't he?—and the scales fell from his eyes. Well... that's exactly what happened to me that day... and Ursula, everybody knows, was down at Roslyn at the time, and didn't come up for ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton

... nothing about the art of crayon portraiture, the mastery of it not only seems very difficult, but almost unattainable. In fact, any work of art of whatever description, which in its execution is beyond the knowledge or comprehension of the spectator, is to him a thing of almost supernatural character. Of course, this is more decided when the subject portrayed carries our thoughts beyond ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt

... you are. Your eyes are full of tears. Listen to me. You chose your subject in the realm of abstract thought, and you did quite right. A work of art should invariably embody some lofty idea. Only that which is seriously meant can ever be beautiful. ...
— The Sea-Gull • Anton Checkov

... dwarfs of no size at all; the same heavy scroll-work, reminding one of the work of a playful giant of a green-grocer who has made a bouquet of sausages and cabbages, egg-plants and legs of mutton, and exhibits it to a thick-headed public as a—work of art. O Roman Plebs! lay this nattering unction to your soul—we ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... the precautions and contrivances Were with such craft foreplanned; the perjuries Were all so well adjusted; my pure life Was made to seem so black; the witnesses Were so well drilled, so perfect in their parts,— In short, it was a work of art so thorough, I did not marvel at the Court's decision, Which was, for her,—divorce and alimony; For me,—no freedom, since no privilege Of marrying again. ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent

... His imagination is too bold to be confined by the petty limits of trochee or iambus. Consequently his pictures, when he condescends to paint, present rather a mass of brilliant coloring than the well-finished detail that we demand in a work of art. We look in vain in his poems for that effort of identity between the conscious and the unconscious activities that Schelling calls the sole privilege of genius. 'The infinite (or perfect) presented as the finite, is Beauty.' Yet the single poem 'Threnody' would ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... admitted, perhaps, in the case of the arts of expression than in the case of arts of decoration and let us define these terms. If you will allow me, I will quote from an address delivered a year ago before the New York Architectural League. Any work of art whose object is to explain and express the thing represented, or to convey the artist's thought about the thing represented, is art of representation, or, if you please, art of expression, or if you please, expressional art. I offer these ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various

... concerning the newcomer were by no means as analytical as this, of course. His first impressions were those of one coming upon a beautiful work of art, a general wonder and admiration, not detailed at all. Judah, standing behind him with an armful of wood, must have had similar feelings, for he whispered, hoarsely, "Creepin' Moses, Cap'n Sears, is that the Prince ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... Englishman who might happen to cross the threshold. I am afraid, however, that the truculence of the old General's expression was utterly thrown away on this stolid and obdurate race of men; for, when they occasionally inquired whom this work of art represented, I was mortified to find that the younger ones had never heard of the battle of New Orleans, and that their elders had either forgotten it altogether, or contrived to misremember, and twist it wrong end foremost into something ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... its superiority. The better to show its attractions, Clinton Grey had placed the figure near a full-length, gold-framed mirror, beside a marble-topped table. Yet how cheap and tawdry these splendors showed beside this work of art! How cruel was the contrast of their own rough working clothes to this miracle of adornment which that same mirror reflected! And even when Clinton Grey, the enthusiast, looked towards his beloved woods for relief, he could not help thinking ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte

... the Apollo Sauroctonos there are two copies, one in the Vatican, and another in bronze in the Villa Albani. Of the Venus of Cnidos of Praxiteles there are several copies in the Vatican; one in particular, in the Chiaramonte Gallery, No. 112, though very inferior as a work of art, gives the exact pose of the original statue as it appears on the coin of Cnidos. The Venus of the Capitol is a Roman version of the Praxitelean statue; it differs in attitude. Several copies of the Discobolos of Myron are still in existence: one in the British Museum, ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... year, a crowd of sorrowing friends stood over his grave as he was laid to rest in Kensal Green; and, as quickly afterwards as it could be executed, a bust to his memory was put up in Westminster Abbey. It is a fine work of art, by Marochetti; but, as a likeness, is, I think, less effective than that which was modelled, and then given to the Garrick Club, by Durham, and has lately been put into marble, and now stands in the upper vestibule of the club. Neither of them, in my opinion, give so ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... organs by a fig-leaf—a practice supposed to have been initiated by the influence of the Jesuits about the middle of the eighteenth century—is a sound one; or whether this is not the very way to lead to objectionable conversations between children. The child compares the work of art with its own body and with the bodies of others which it has seen, notes the difference at once, and is ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll

... to speak to his brother concerning the work of art. Seeing Marzio's attitude, he started with a short cry and stretched out his arm as though to ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford

... the most important books of the year. It is a work of art as well as of historical science, and its distinctive purpose is to give an insight into the real life and character of people.... The author's style is charming, and the history is fully as interesting ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... her hair down over her brow again, then with her hands seemed to efface the flush on her cheeks; elongated the oval of her face, and rearranged her tawny head, which had all the charm of a work of art; and finally, turning round, she merely threw Jory these words by way of reply: Look! there's my Titianesque effect ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... pedestal. Such had the vase been in the days of its prosperity, when it stood on the top of the book-case. By what accident had it become broken? And why had Major Fitz-David's face changed when he found that I had discovered the remains of his shattered work of art ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins

... but Isobel's artistic fancy had made it a perfect work of art. It was the figure of a youth clad in armour holding high in his right hand a white cross with "Onward" worked in ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... defy any man to point out a single instance where the French republican armies or Napoleon ever injured or wantonly destroyed a single national edifice, a single work of art, a single book belonging to any other country! On the contrary, they invariably extended their protection to the Arts and Sciences. Why at Vienna, where there is, I understand, a most splendid museum, and many most valuable works of art ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... perfected, until, in the middle ground which we call life, somewhere between nothing and nothing, hangs the perfect thing which we love and cannot understand, but which we are compelled to confess a work of art. It is at once something and nothing, a dream of happy memory, a song, a benediction. In viewing it one finds nothing to criticise or to regret. The thing sings, it has colour. It has rapture. You wonder at the loving, patient care ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton

... morning she was gone. The note that she left, tender and hysterical in tone, and intended to be most kind, hurt her lover terribly. It was as if some work of art had been broken by him, some picture in the National Gallery slashed out of its frame. When he recalled her talents and her social position, he felt that the first passerby had a right to shoot him down. He ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... Sully. The tone of each picture is warm, but dark. There are no "brilliant effects." Repose speaks in all. Not one is of small size. Diminutive paintings give that spotty look to a room, which is the blemish of so many a fine work of Art overtouched. The frames are broad but not deep, and richly carved, without being dulled or filagreed. They have the whole lustre of burnished gold. They lie flat on the walls, and do not hang off with cords. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... In your reading you must have in view some definite aim—some aim other than the wish to derive pleasure. I conceive that to give pleasure is the highest end of any work of art, because the pleasure procured from any art is tonic, and transforms the life into which it enters. But the maximum of pleasure can only be obtained by regular effort, and regular effort implies the organisation of that effort. Open-air walking is a glorious exercise; it is the walking ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT

... in the wrong place. It is, of course, here that the art of the photographer comes in; and, although he can by careful selection, arrangement, and the regulation of exposure, largely counteract the mechanical tendency, a photograph by its very nature can never take the place of a work of art—the first-hand expression, more or less abstract, of a human mind, or the creative inner vision ...
— Line and Form (1900) • Walter Crane

... was slain, Son of Harmonides, whose practis'd hand Knew well to fashion many a work of art; By Pallas highly favour'd; he the ships For Paris built, first origin of ill, Freighted with evil to the men of Troy, And to himself, who knew not Heav'n's decrees. Him, in his headlong flight, in hot pursuit Meriones o'ertook, and thrust his lance Through his right flank; beneath ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... it remarked. A work of art may stand very far from Nature, provided its own parts are consistent. Heaven forbid that a critic should decry an author for being fantastic, so long as he ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... cared for any information I might give her. What she wished was to dangle it before my eyes and put a prohibitive price on it. "The face comes back to me, it torments me," I said, turning the object this way and that and looking at it very critically. It was a careful but not a supreme work of art, larger than the ordinary miniature and representing a young man with a remarkably handsome face, in a high-collared green coat and a buff waistcoat. I judged the picture to have a valuable quality of resemblance and to have been painted when the model was about twenty-five years ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... marble Taj Mahal rises from a terrace, dazzling white in the sunshine—a summer dream of white clouds turned to stone, a work of art which only love could conjure out of the rubbish of earth. The airy cupola, the arched portals, and bright white walls are reflected in the pool. At each of the four corners of the terrace stands a tall ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin

... form of the original egg. A score of streaked and knotted lines run from the top to the base. It is the wizard's pointed cap, the mitre with the grooves carved into jewelled chaplets. All said, the Cabbage-caterpillar's birth-casket is an exquisite work of art. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre

... much less than that of the hall of audience; its decoration in the same grandiose style. Enormous pillars of granite supported the roof; statues stood, or had stood, all around; the pavement, composed of serpentine, porphyry, and Numidian marble in many hues, was a superb work of art. But Basil saw only the human figures before him. In a chair covered with furs sat a man of middle age, robust, fair-complexioned, with a keen look in his pale blue eyes and something of the wolfish about his mouth. Bessas had long ago given proof of valour, and enjoyed repute as a general, ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing

... they are!" said Marcella, looking at her watch. "Tell me the names again, dear lady"—she bent forward, and laid her hand affectionately on Mrs. Allison's knee. "Your parties are always a work of art." ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... moral ideas of which offend him, without giving sufficient consideration to the success or failure of the novelist in the effort to make his characters live. Similarly, he praises a novel with the moral ideas of which he agrees, without reflecting that perhaps it is as a tract rather than as a work of art that it has given him pleasure. Both the praise and blame which have been heaped upon Mr. Kipling are largely due to appreciation or dislike of his politics. The Imperialist finds his heart beating faster as he reads The English Flag, and he praises Mr. Kipling ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd

... who had so deeply touched her sympathies. Her last meeting with him was in Paris. He then stood with his sister gazing on Schoffer's picture, which so beautifully represents the gradual rise of the soul through the sorrows of earth to heaven. This beautiful work of art "consists of figures grouped together, those nearest the earth bowed down and overwhelmed with the most crushing sorrow; above them are those who are beginning to look upward, and the sorrow in their faces is subsiding into anxious inquiry; still above ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams

... had just been selected as he who should throw all The rest in the shade, by the gracious bestowal On myself, after twenty or thirty rejections, Of those fossil remains which she called her "affections," And that rather decayed but well-known work of art Which Miss Flora persisted in styling her "heart." So we were engaged. Our troth had been plighted, Not by moonbeam or starbeam, by fountain or grove, But in a front parlor, most brilliantly lighted, Beneath the gas-fixtures, we whispered our love. Without any romance, or raptures, or sighs, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... nothing more satisfyingly ornate: richness without floridity. But let no one think to know all its beauty until he has penetrated to the little chapel and stood before Mantegna's S. Sebastian, that great simple work of art by an intellectual master. This noble painting, possibly the last from his brush, was found in Mantegna's studio after his death. Notice the smoking candle-wick at the foot, and the motto which says that everything that is not of God ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... development would be found in what is called the "sociological" novel. Monstrous and misshapen as this must seem to us often, if considered as a work of art, it would have to be reckoned with in any investigation of the ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... Asolo who sing it on dewy mornings when they climb the castle hill. This is the outcome of Sordello's life, and it sounds like irony on Browning's lips. It is not so; the irony is elsewhere in the poem, and is of another kind. Here, the conclusion is,—that the poem, or any work of art, made in joy, in sympathy with human life, moved by the love of loveliness in man or in nature, lives and lasts in beauty, heals and makes happy the world. And it has its divine origin in the artist's loss of himself in humanity, and his finding of himself, through union ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... accustomed to the darkness, he found himself in a spacious, rocky room. It was one of those natural caves which seem as if the work of art, rather than a freak of nature. The room was almost a perfect square, and extending around its sides was a seat of solid rock, while in a square hole, which looked as if it had been excavated for the purpose, was a spring, ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson

... and some unheard-of Turkish female. I never saw anything so hideous; it is even worse than your frightful clock with Columbus discovering America! Madame Taverneau thought that M. de Meilhan, being a poet and an artist, would compliment her upon possessing so rare and valuable a work of art. Fortunately he said nothing—he even refrained from smiling; this showed his great generosity and delicacy, for it is only a man of refinement and delicacy that respects one's illusions—especially when they are illusions in ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin

... than the whole," unless, that is to say, one expressly told the spectator that St. Alkmund's spire was hidden behind St. Mary's— a sort of explanation which seldom adds to the poetical value of any work of art. Do what one may, and no matter how scientific one may be, one cannot attain absolute truth. The question is rather, how do people like to have their error? than, will they go without any error at all? All truth and no error cannot ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler

... escaped her lips was not only an expression of her pleasure, but it convinced every man in the club that the Countess's technical knowledge of what constituted a work of art equalled her many other accomplishments. She sat looking at it with thoughtful, grave face, and her whole manner changed. She was no longer the woman who had so charmed the room. She was the connoisseur, the expert, the jury of last resort. Oliver watched her with ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... we pin them on the wall, and are received into the landlady's heart at once. I don't know which is the finer study: the picture of his Majesty William III. crossing the Boyne, or the plump little Queen presenting a huge family Bible to an apparently uninterested black youth. In the latter work of art the eye is confused at first as the three principal features approach each other very nearly in size, and Francesca asked innocently, "Which IS the secret of England's greatness—the Bible, the Queen, ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... The impression it gave one came as an anti-climax. The Subaltern was beginning to develop a fine taste in French chateaux, but somehow this one did not rank with the others, although his brain reeled at the thought of the cost of it all. Probably that is why it failed as a work of art and beauty: it made one wonder how much ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... himself, as a citizen of her chosen city, to carry out her will in contributing his best efforts to its supremacy in politics, in literature, and in art." That Scipio had some feeling of this kind need not be doubted, though the statue was not a great work of art like that of Phidias. Cp. ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... correct copy of any genuine Jacobean work of art. Is Dugdale accurate in his reproductions of other monuments in Stratford Church? To satisfy himself on this point, Sir George Trevelyan, as he wrote to me (June 13, 1912), "made a sketch of the Carew Renaissance ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang

... clear idea of what he intended to write. We must either believe that he did this, or that Suessmayer was as great a genius as he; for not one of Mozart's acknowledged masses will bear comparison with the 'Requiem,' either as a work of art or the expression of a devout religious feeling. In this respect it stands almost alone among instrumental masses, which nearly always sacrifice religious feeling to ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... had reproduced what she thought was a copy from memory. It was made from a piece of awning containing stripes, with blue stars sewn in. This waitress said she had worked at night on it and got as near as possible to her idea of an American flag. While it was not a work of art, it was a homely representation of the Stars and Stripes and a tribute from an humble citizen of France ...
— A Journey Through France in War Time • Joseph G. Butler, Jr.

... Bull—a highly prized work of art," said Mr. Hyde. "When the French invaded Holland, Napoleon ordered it to Paris, to ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels

... disappointing. It has been so much rebuilt after different convulsions, and pulled about when there has been less excuse, that many a church in an obscure village gives more pleasure as a whole to the eye that seeks unity of design and inspiration in a work of art. Nevertheless, there are details here that no archaeologist will despise. In the nave are the piers and Romanesque capitals of an early, but not the earliest, church on the spot. They are certainly ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker

... beautiful, a most magnificent work of art. The wall is so broad, that Proxenides, the Braggartian, and Theogenes could pass each other in their chariots, even if they were drawn by steeds as big ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... it, almost every day; and with the boy's marvellous memory and the father's skill, and the delicious profusion of fresh material which Newton kept finding in every corner of the workshop, it grew steadily, till it was a little work of art in its way. There were the ups and downs, the crooked old roads and lanes and the straight new streets, the little wooden cottages and the big brick houses, and there was the grassy common with its trees and its tiny iron railing; and John Henry easily made posts ...
— The Little City Of Hope - A Christmas Story • F. Marion Crawford

... The clearest evidence of intuition is in the works of great artists. 'What is implied is that in artistic creation, in the work of genius and imagination, we have pure novelty issuing from no premeditated or rational idea, but simply pure irrationality and unaccountableness.'[20] The work of art cannot be predicated; it is beyond reason, as life is beyond logic and law.[21] But so far from finding life unintelligible, it would be nearer the truth to say that man's reason can, strictly speaking, understand nothing else.[22] 'Instinct finds,' ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... book to be read very often; one has the substance in one's own experience, and in the contemplation of other people's, too readily at hand for that to be necessary or perhaps desirable. But a great work of art which is also a great record of nature is not too common—and this is ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... least say that my ideal in something has been realized. He goes far beyond all that I expected. Anything so perfectly beautiful as he looks when he sits at the piano I never saw, and yet he is almost an old man now. I enjoy him as I would an exquisite work of art. His personal magnetism is immense, and I can scarcely bear it when he plays. He can make me cry all he chooses, and that is saying a good deal, because I've heard so much music, and never have ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard

... latter, only about a mile and a half in circumference, rises out of the ocean to the height of about one hundred and forty-four feet. Before landing we sailed along the eastern shore, examining the wonderful caves and the fine colonnades which form its sides. One might suppose that it was rather a work of art than thrown up by Nature. The yachts were hove-to, and we pulled off to examine the caves in the boats. One is known as the Clam Shell Cave, another as the Herdsman's Cave, and a third is denominated the Great Colonnade and Causeway. Then there comes the Boat Cave, and ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... we regard a work of art, we are not sensible of pleasure until all the several elements of beauty are blended together, so if the ludicrous be a compound, there is some power within us that fuses the several emotions into one, and evolves out of them a completely new and distinct feeling. The product has a ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... engravers who preserved what little record of it is left for us, especially in the drawing of the nude. If we compare the vault of the Sistine Chapel with the contemporary engravings we shall be able to estimate the enormous difference between the cartoon, which may have been the greatest work of art produced in Italy, and the copies of it that exist. The most complete copy of the cartoon is the monochrome painting belonging to the Earl of Leicester, at Holkham Hall. There is a sketch of the whole composition in the Albertina Gallery at Vienna, and the line engraving by Marc Antonio Raimondi ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... dress—a present from kind Lady Janet—is finished. I was allowed to see the first trial, or preliminary rehearsal, of this work of art. I don't in the least understand the merits of silk and lace; but one thing I know—my wife will be the most ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins

... door, made a special trip in his carryall to fetch the old lady. Captain Zebedee and Mrs. Mayo beamed from their pew. Dr Parker and his wife smiled at them across the aisle. Didama Rogers's new bonnet was a work of art and her neck threatened to twist itself off as she turned to see ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... beseech you, Eugenius, do not give us a philosophical novel. Every work of art of a high order will, in one sense of the word, be philosophical; there will be philosophy there for those who can penetrate it, and sometimes the reader will gather a profounder and juster meaning, than the author himself detected in his fiction. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... judgments have changed. I have either to give crude judgments from which I dissent, or later judgments which were not those of the time. I have omitted both.... I knew the great Victorian authors. Thackeray I loved: Vanity Fair delighted me, and Esmond was obviously a great work of art; the giant charmed me by his kindness to me as a boy. But Dickens was to me a sea-captain with a taste for melodrama, and the author of Pickwick. It is only in old age that I have learnt that there was real beauty and charm in David Copperfield. So, too, Mill ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn

... social sympathies are so keen that his gospel furnishes the Christian socialist with nearly all his favourite texts. Above all, he is a Greek man of letters, dominated by the conventions of Greek historical composition. For the Greek, history was a work of art, written for edification, and not merely a bald record of facts. The Greek historian invented speeches for his principal characters; this was a conventional way of elucidating the situation for the benefit of his readers. Everyone knows how ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge

... that Lord Byron might take an interest in either a place, a monument, or a work of art, he must associate them in his mind with some fact which had really taken place. By what was he ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... stopping with the time of William the Conqueror. Impossible to place our Cathedral in that other family of lofty, aerial churches, rich in painted windows and sculpture; pointed in form, bold in attitude; communal and bourgeois as political symbols; free, capricious, lawless, as a work of art; second transformation of architecture, no longer hieroglyphic, immovable and sacerdotal, but artistic, progressive, and popular, which begins at the return from the crusades, and ends with Louis IX. Notre-Dame de Paris is not of pure Romanesque, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... which thinks not merely of the week's salary, but of the perfection of the masterpiece. They seem to find intense personal satisfaction in producing a beautiful toilet, in fashioning a delicate thing which almost has the qualities of a work of art; and when the subject is naturally well formed,—tout faite, as they say,—and not artificially made up with what is called the taille de couturiere, their ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various

... centuries. This you may read in any of the histories of the Church and times. The Protestants of the present day praise all these works of art now; but if their ancestors had had their way every beautiful work of art would ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead

... article on "A Prisoned Millionaire" more than equaled Philip's expectations. No such "story" had appeared in the city press in a long time. It was what was called, in the language of the period, a work of art—that is, a sensation, heightened by all the words of color in the language, applied not only to material things, but to states and qualities of mind, such as "purple emotions" and "scarlet intrepidity." It was also exceedingly complimentary. Mavick himself ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... common men. He sees life moving eternally behind the forms he separates and "creates." And to those of us who are akin to him, who are temperamentally artistic, he offers freedom of a kind. The contemplation of a work of art releases the tension of the nerves. To use the language of psychology it "arrests" us, suspends the functions of our everyday surface personality, abolishes for a moment time and space, allows the "free," generally suppressed subconscious ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various

... beginning to end, by every man and woman and child, lay or clerical,—translated into every tongue,—more intensely felt, if possible, in Italy and Spain than in Normandy and England,—perhaps most effective, as a work of art, when sung by the Templars in their great castles in the Holy Land,—it is now best felt at Mont-Saint- Michel, and from the first must have been there at home. The proof is the line, evidently inserted for the sake of its local effect, which invoked Saint Michael in ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... would be both mercenary and irreverent; moreover, my bonnet has nothing to do with artistic rules. It is not a work of art or of science, of nature or of grace. It is a conventional signal by which I announce a friendly disposition toward the follies of my fellow-creatures—a sort of flag of truce, a badge of my conformity in little things. I wear it voluntarily ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... from the choirs of Bury and other neighbouring towns, and from gentlemen amateurs, conversant with Handel. The Messiah was the performance of Monday night; and, on the whole, was executed in a style worthy of that great work of art, the conductor being Sir Henry Bishop, who wore his robes as a musical bachelor of the University of Oxford. On Tuesday there was a grand miscellaneous concert, the hall being even more numerously ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various

... excess," was their favorite maxim. They hated every thing that was out of proportion. Their language, without a rival in flexibility and symmetry and in perfection of sound, is itself, though a spontaneous creation, a work of art. "The whole language resembles the body of an artistically trained athlete, in which every muscle, every sinew, is developed into full play, where there is no trace of tumidity or of inert matter, and all is power and life." ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... interesting than the thin ivory-headed staff which supported him on his way to the scaffold; more curious than the diary in which he recorded the events of night and day, of dreaming hours and waking. In the library at St. John's they show his bust—a tarnished, gilded work of art. He has a neat little cocked-up moustache, not like a prelate's; the face is that of a Bismarck ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang

... left. The apparition was a statue of Pentelic marble, and might therefore possess as much value as a treasure. Signor de Fredis went at once to the Prefect of the City, who followed him in company with the Aedile and some learned antiquaries. The work of art was brought to the light, and inspected. Its subject was seen to be the Trojan priest Laocoon, against whom Apollo had sent two snakes because he had warned his countrymen against receiving the dangerous ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... noticeable in the present instance is, that the writing has lost the sharpness of the graver by use, or returning it into its case; or more probably the case has not been used at all, being cumbersome and set aside as a curious work of art, which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various

... was, I saw at once that I was brought face to face with what would some day be a famous work of art. The figures were grandly grouped; the heads were noble; the sky was full of air; the action of the whole scene informed ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... the tobacco tin which was proffered him his hands trembled so excessively that the rolling of a cigarette was a work of art. ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon

... twenty guineas for this work of art?—fifteen, five, name your own price. The gentleman without the elephant is ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... erected a statue of Louis XIV. to celebrate his royal master's triumphs, the pedestal of which was decorated with allegorical representations of the nations which had been conquered by the French marshals. It was generally regarded as the finest work of art in the city, and as such it had long been an object of admiration and pride to the citizens. But M. Lameth, in his new-born enthusiasm, regarded it with other eyes, and closed his speech by proposing that, as monuments of despotism and ...
— The Life of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France • Charles Duke Yonge

... common talk sounds finer in a foreign tongue,—yet it is but for a time, and then the inevitable limitations of the counterfeit come in,—its narrowness and fixity,—crude paint for sunbeams, cold and colorless stone for the living form. The only test of a work of Art is, how far it will carry us,—not any comparison by the yardstick. We demand to be raised above our habitual point of view, and be made aware of a deeper interest than we knew of. It is in hope of this alone that we pardon the necessary shortcoming ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various

... obligatory. In Spain, it is celebrated with all the pomp and ostentation imaginable. In the poor towns and villages, the priest carries the consecrated host in his hands; but in rich cathedral towns, an expensive tabernacle or canopy of silver, generally a master-work of art, is provided for the purpose. It is called La Custodia. That of Seville is divided into three bodies or compartments, and adorned with bas-relief, admirably executed, and having in the lower part an urn of ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... talked with an extraordinary perfection of manner. There was not a voice there, save perhaps Austin Page's unstudied tones, which was not carefully modulated in a variety of rhythm and pitch which made each sentence a work of art. They used, for the most part, low tones and few gestures, but those well chosen. There was an earnest effort apparent to achieve true conversational give-and-take, and if one of the older men found himself yielding to the national passion for ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... years of age, is a creditable boy's book; it aims to portray character as well as to develop incidents, and in spite of the dreadful silliness of its melodramatic passages it has merit. Conventionally it is more nearly a work of art than that other famous boy's book, Disraeli's 'Vivian Grey,' though the latter is alive and blooming with the original literary charm which is denied to the other. Other characteristic novels of his are 'The Last Days of Pompeii,' 'Ernest Maltravers,' 'Zanoni,' 'The Caxtons,' 'My Novel,' 'What ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various

... be the result of growing older; and if I do not recognise the Wagner of other days, it is perhaps because I do not recognise my former self. A work of art, and above all a work of musical art, changes with ourselves. Siegfried, for example, is for me no longer full of mystery. The qualities in it that strike me to-day are its cheerful vigour, its clearness of form, its virile force and freedom, and the extraordinary healthiness ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... attention was about fifteen inches in height, and represented a little child in the attitude of prayer. Anyone seeing it for the first time would probably have taken it for a representation of the Infant Samuel. I have called it commonplace; and considered as a work of art, such it undoubtedly was; yet it must have possessed a certain distinctive individuality, for the brief glance which I had caught of it, even at that distance, had been sufficient to convince me that the figure was an old acquaintance of mine. ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent

... Concerning the Language and History of Luther's Small Catechism," 1909, J. Gillhoff writes: "Here, if ever, arose a master of language, who expressed the deepest mysteries in sounds most simple. Here, if ever, there was created in the German language and spirit, and in brief compass, a work of art of German prose. If ever the gods blessed a man to create, consciously or unconsciously, on the soil of the people and their needs, a perfect work of popular art in the spirit of the people and in the terms ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... artistic and most original thing that its author has done.... We can heartily recommend 'A Duet' to all classes of readers. It is a good book to put into the hands of the young of either sex. It will interest the general reader, and it should delight the critic, for it is a work of art. This story taken with the best of his previous work gives Dr. Doyle a very high place ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... end. No man can choose a picture for another, any more than a wife or a waistcoat. It is part of our essential nature to choose these things for ourselves, and paradoxical as it may seem, the wife and the waistcoat and the work of Art our departmental wiseacres may least approve of, if chosen sua sponte by Giles or Roger, will not only give them more delectation, but do them more good, than one chosen by somebody else for him upon the finest of all possible principles. Besides ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... exhibition, the picture was sent to the Water-colour Society. At the private view, the Princess of Wales and other eminent critics pronounced against the Solomon, but as soon as the public were admitted, the tune changed, and John Bull vowed it was the finest work of art ever produced in England. If posterity has not indorsed this judgment, the Solomon is at least regarded, by competent critics, as Haydon's most successful work. 'Before the doors had been open half an hour,' writes Haydon, 'a gentleman opened his pocket-book, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... thought," she returned eagerly. "And this is so in keeping with my real tastes—don't you see? A real portrait—I mean a serious work of art, you know—should always be something more than a mere likeness, should it not? Don't you think that to be genuinely good, a portrait must reveal the spirit and character—must portray the soul, as ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright

... appeared in vision to St. Francis, Chastity, Obedience, and Poverty: Chastity being attended by Fortitude, Purity, and Penance; Obedience by Prudence and Humility; Poverty by Hope and Charity. The systems vary with almost every writer, and in almost every important work of art which embodies them, being more or less spiritual according to the power of intellect by which they were conceived. The most noble in literature are, I suppose, those of Dante and Spenser: and with these we may compare five of the most ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin

... illumination to be fully seen. Even her characteristic flower, though it seemed to be still there, had undergone a cold and bright transfiguration; it was a flower exquisitely imitated in jeweller's work, and imparting the last touch that transformed Zenobia into a work of art. ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... as you undo the parcel, take out the treasure (which you once saw in Johnson's catalogue for L3), turn eagerly to its title-page, and collate it as gently as though you were handling some priceless work of art? Don't tell me! The specialist gets a thousand times more pleasure out of his hobby than ever did casual buyer. Besides, what rapture will be his whenever he chance upon some book for which he has long been searching, or upon some work on his very subject and yet unknown ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan

... little distance. A railroad has been built expressly to carry away the earth. The cars are drawn by mules. The girls prefer carrying their baskets on their heads. The men have to dig carefully, for there is no knowing when they may come across some rare and valuable work of art. ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... for most stories of human life are, or at least aim at being, works of art,—selections of interesting portions of life, and fitting incidents, put together and presented as a picture is; and I have not aimed at producing a work of art at all, but a piece of nature. I have attempted to beguile my readers into something like a sense of reality; to make them fancy that they were reading the unskillful chronicle of things that really occurred, rather than some invented story as interesting ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow

... the pale, pale snowdrop there, Scentless and chaste of heart; The moonflower, making spiritual the air, Like some pure work of art; Divine and holy, exquisitely fair, And ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein

... even. I had to admit that I could not share his hopes of the influence of an artistic portrayal of the sufferings of the weavers upon the people of wealth. Self-satisfied virtue is hard to move. Rather did I believe that a great work of art, treating of the life of the masses, was bound to rouse their consciousness to their ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... Ginger suspiciously. His attitude towards Sally's address resembled somewhat that of a connoisseur who has acquired a unique work of art. He wanted to keep it to himself and gloat ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse

... the court displayed a fountain, where a huge bear, carved in stone, predominated over a large stone-basin, into which he disgorged the water. This work of art was the wonder of the country ten miles round. It must not be forgotten, that all sorts of bears, small and large, demi or in full proportion, were carved over the windows, upon the ends of the gables, terminated the spouts, and supported the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... work of art and needs a master hand to bring out its noblest qualities. We have good and bad tea, as we have good and bad paintings—generally the latter. There is no single recipe for making the perfect tea, as there are no rules for producing a Titian or a Sesson. ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura

... own. All artistic forms lie dormant in the soul, and there is no work of art actually foreign to us, nor can such a one appear, in all the future ages of the world. But the music of Debussy is proper to us, in our day, as is no other, and might stand before all time our symbol. For it lived in us before it was ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld

... "Grand Art," the remaining element as well as the other two must be perfected in result. The perfection of this element of sentiment is shown in the work by the impression of grandeur or elegance, of grace, severity or delicacy. The triple necessity thus filled, the result is truly a work of art. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... mountains such as I have described, recalling to my memory the most imaginative efforts of Mr. Martin's saepia drawing, and showing how far the painter's fancy may anticipate nature. But, at the gorge of this valley, there stood a sort of watch-tower, as if to guard the entrance, so like a work of art, that even here, where men and kangaroos were equally wild and artless, I was obliged to look very attentively, to be quite convinced that the tower was the work of nature only. A turret with a pointed roof, of a colour corresponding, first appeared through the trees, as if it ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... speak from, the more certain I might feel of the genuineness and value of the Ideal which was sure to spring out of it. Fancy and Imagination, Grace and Beauty, all those qualities which are to the work of Art what scent and colour are to the flower, can only grow towards heaven by taking root in earth. Is not the noblest poetry of prose fiction the poetry of ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... Virgin. For the sake of economy the head only was procured from abroad, the vestments concealing all the rest of the figure except the feet, which rested upon a globe encircled by a snake in whose mouth is an apple. The beauty of the countenance, a real work of art, appealed to Rizal, and he modeled the more prominent right foot, the apple and the serpent's head, while the artist Sister assisted by doing the minor work. Both curtain and image, twenty years after their ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig

... produce proficiency, that spark commonly known as genius, without which, cultivation, strictly speaking, is impossible, there being nothing to cultivate. We find that the most ardent admiration for the Violin regarded as a work of art, has ever been found to emanate from those who possessed tastes for kindred arts. Painters, musicians, and men of refined minds have generally been foremost among the admirers of the Violin. Much interest attaches to it from the fact of its being the sole instrument incapable ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart

... say not," said her cousin. Then he broke out in quite a different tone: "No wonder I don't; she's a perpetual revelation to me. I never saw anything like her—so pure, so spotless, so exquisite. It's like looking at a work of art—a bit of delicate china, or a picture by Francia or Guido. Something holy and serene about her—something that sets her apart from the ordinary world. I can't define it: but it's there. I feel myself made of a coarse, common clay in her presence: I want to go down on my knees and serve her like ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... 6th of October, 1871, Governor Hayes delivered the striking address we give below, on the occasion of the inauguration of the celebrated Davidson fountain, in Cincinnati. This fountain, in design and execution, is a work of art ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard

... are sound or not? What does it matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so fiery-coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its elaborate symphonic music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of word and epithet, is at least as great a work of art as any of those wonderful sunsets that bleach or rot on their corrupted canvases in England's Gallery; greater indeed, one is apt to think at times, not merely because its equal beauty is more enduring, ...
— Selected Prose of Oscar Wilde - with a Preface by Robert Ross • Oscar Wilde

... right to ask a work of art by what methods it claims to move us, by which side of our character it intends ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... in one unbroken synthetic time-span. It is, to revive a scholastic phrase, a totum simul, an all-at-once experience, in which parts, however many, make one integral whole, as in a melody or in a work of art; so that the mystic has a real experience of what we try to express by the word Eternity. It feels as though the usual insulations of our own narrow personal life were suddenly broken through and we were in actual contact with an enfolding ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones

... This work of art, conveying the moral that virtue is an economic asset, made a great impression on Lise. Good Old Testament doctrine, set forth in the Book of Job itself. And Leila, pictured as holding out for a higher price and getting it, encouraged Lise to hold out also. Mr. Wiley, in whose company she ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... civility. Of what use to behave otherwise? There always remained the liberty to give notice if the worst came to the worst, though what the worst might eventually prove to be it required a lurid imagination to depict. The epergne was a beautiful thing of crystal and gold, a celebrated work of art, regarded as an exquisite possession. It was almost remarkable that Mr. Temple Barholm had not said, "Shove it on one side," but Burrill had been spared the poignant indignity of being required ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... document, nearly three hundred typewritten pages, neatly bound in hard covers. Mary hadn't looked in it far when she knew she was examining a work of art. ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston

... casual flourish, one great arm was half turned, showing the comparative white of the underarm upon which was blazoned a pair of gory hearts in collision, impaled on a harpoon apparently. Around this work of art a flamboyant motto announced to the ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... are about to see the Magyar piano? It was but a "czimbalom."[35] It is true that it was a marvellous work of art, inlaid with ebony and mother-of-pearl; the nails on which the strings were stretched were of silver, the groundwork a mosaic of coloured woods; the two drumsticks lying upon the strings had handles of red coral; the stand ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai



Words linked to "Work of art" :   art, period piece, warhorse, piece, art object, fine art, pastiche, magnum opus, objet d'art



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