"Portrayer" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nature: on this the poet builds; he calls up from their hidden abysses that dread of the unknown, that presage of a dark side of nature, and a world of spirits, which philosophy now imagines it has altogether exploded. In this manner he is in some degree both the portrayer and the philosopher of superstition; that is, not the philosopher who denies and turns it into ridicule, but, what is still more difficult, who distinctly exhibits its origin in apparently irrational ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... progress by its contribution to the elevation of the social tone. For indeed, life follows art. It is art that exerts this powerful influence upon life which it may lead to loftier heights or drag down to the moral abyss. The artist is not merely the portrayer of existing types; he is the inspirer of those ideal types which human life should recognize as its pattern, its model to be followed and ultimately achieved. The world needs ideal and poetic art to minister to the ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... Instead of these graceful masters of the false pastoral taste of the decaying century, a robust group of military painters arises, Vernet, Charlet, Gericault, and later Raffet, most brutal, but most candid portrayer of the armies of the Republic. The false classical style, inherited from the period of Louis XVI, is metamorphosed by David and Gros, becomes inflated, declamatory, vapid, and wooden. David's immense picture, the most insistent ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... Johnson tedious, it was no doubt partly due to his inability to reconcile himself to Johnson's table manners. It can hardly be denied that he was unnaturally sensitive to surface impressions. He was a great observer of manners, but not a great portrayer of character. He knew men in their absurd actions rather than in their motives—even their absurd motives. He never admits us into the springs of action in his portraits as Saint-Simon does. He was too studied a believer in the puppetry of men and women to make them more ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd |
