"Still life" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... foul; he threw it down with an exclamation of disgust. Its foulness was symbolic; everything was out of kilter. He looked at the picture he had been painting for a week—rotten! It was a still life; a broken jar and three books on a rag of Persian embroidery. Picking up his pen-knife he deliberately cut the canvas out of the stretcher, and setting a match to a corner of it, tossed it in the empty stove. He paced up and down the room wondering what the devil ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... a disadvantage to Eyebright, at her age, to be taken out of school; still life on the island was a schooling for all that, and schooling of a very useful kind. History and geography are excellent things, but no geography or history can take the place of the lessons which Eyebright was now learning,—lessons in patience, unselfishness, good-humor, and helpfulness. ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... or Pekin, it still must be the human being that lends the interest to the still life around it. A truce, therefore, to picturesque description—sour grapes to the present pen—of church and fort and river, with which the living persons of whom we tell have ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... all vain teachings, all the poisonous vipers, wherever they may be, and in the sight of all suspend them like a banner. Let the wounded look upon them, perhaps they will be cured—perhaps there is still healing for their ills, perhaps there is still life in them!" ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... Rome must perish; for faith in the gods was lost, and so were strict habits! Rome must perish; and it was a pity, for still life was pleasant there. Caesar was gracious, wine was ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... other wonders of the world: that of it you get no idea from descriptions, or even from paintings. Of the 'Mammoth Cave' you have a conception from what you are told; of the Natural Bridge you get a really truthful impression from a picture. But cave and bridge are in still life. Niagara is all activity and change. No picture gives you the varying form of the water or the change of color; no description conveys to your mind the ceaseless roar. So, too, the ocean must be unrepresentable to those who have not looked ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... Ruthven heard that and opened his eyes to look at the speaker, although at the moment it would not have troubled him much if he had been tipped off again. But the other stretcher-bearer said there was still life in him; and partly because the ground about them was pattering with bullets, and the air about them clamant and reverberating with the rush and roar of passing and exploding shells and bombs, and that particular spot, ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... away accompanied by a crowd, the other stayed to look after the woman. He touched the woman with his foot as he might have tapped a dying dog to see if there was still life there. A low growl like a fierce animal came from Sam's ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... "Still life doesn't interest me," he declared. "Bones are bones, after all, you know. I don't even care who my grandfather was, much less who my grandfather a million times removed might have been. Let's step into the study for a moment, Professor, if you don't mind," ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... recognised beauty of style, still further attracted that cultured public which had at once accepted his earlier work as that of a master of English. As already stated, it was Will o' the Mill, a charmingly written story of still life, with a quiet philosophy all its own, that Mr Hamerton had pronounced a masterpiece of style. Markheim was a graphic, but very unpleasant, story of a murder; Olalla, a horrible, but powerfully written, sketch ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... is dull, in the way of West Eend people, the country, I guess, is a little mucher. Life in the country is different, of course, from life in town; but still life itself is alike there, exceptin' again class difference. That is, nobility is all alike, as far as their order goes; and country gents is alike, as far as their class goes; and the last especially, when ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... otherwise, when all one's prospect, all one's landscapes, historical pieces, portraits, flowers, still life, are nothing but a single line, with no varieties except degrees of brightness ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... infinite lines of strength which rose from broad and massive bases, and, sweeping upwards, told of illimitable tracts beyond—mighty waves on the surface of the world's great inland seas, on whose crests sat the green and purple foam of herbage, and in whose hollows lay the still life of home and pasture. Silent, changeless, secure, perpetual sublimity rested on their summits, and unbroken repose lay along their graceful sweeps. They were the joy-bearers to the poor child of sorrow, who with eager eye looked out on their morning revelations. ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... do not recollect in the author's former work any symptom of that sympathetic treatment of still life, which is noticeable now and again in the fables; and perhaps most noticeably, when he sketches the burned letters as they hover along the gusty flue, "Thin, sable veils, wherein a restless spark Yet trembled." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has a duck pond. He was a bit of still life; a chip; weak water gruel; a tame rabbit, boiled to rags, without sauce or salt. He received my arguments with his mouth open, like a poorbox gaping for half-pence, and, good or bad, he swallowed them all without any resistance. We could n't disagree, ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... etching of Rembrandt's of a spotted shell, which he has made altogether sublime by broad truth and large ideality of light and shade; and so I have seen frequent instances of very grand ideality in treatment of the most commonplace still life, by our own Hunt, where the petty glosses and delicacies, and minor forms, are all merged in a broad glow of suffused color; so also in pieces of the same kind by Etty, where, however, though the richness ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... unquestionable principle, that the artist who has made himself master of the drawing of the human figure, in its moral and physical expression, will succeed not only in portrait-painting, but in the delineation of animals, and even of still life, much better than if he had directed his attention to inferior objects. For the human figure in that point of consideration, in which it becomes a model to art, is more beautiful than any other in nature; and is distinguished, above every other, by ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... minutiae in the delineation of the different animals, and in the diversity of the branches and leaves of the various trees seen therein;" and thenceforward the catastrophe is direct, to the ornithological museums which Breughel painted for gardens of Eden, and to the still life and dead game of ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... there is an abundance of still life in the Gardens at this ungenial season. We find the Elephant, the Antelopes, and the Zebra, in their winter quarters, and their mightinesses, the large cats, as the lions, tiger, and leopards, accommodated with a snug fire. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 535, Saturday, February 25, 1832. • Various
... my window is not one of still life. Over the shrubbery I can see the white-painted gates leading to the mansion, and outside of these runs the Levee road. Although the foliage hinders me from a full view of the road itself, I see at intervals the people passing along it. In the dress of the Creoles the ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... in and about the vessel was absolutely and finally in order. As he walked among the perfumed tangles of shrub and flower in his garden, and out towards the sea-shore he was impressed by the great silence everywhere around him. Everything looked like a moveless picture—a study in still life. Passing through a little olive wood which lay between his own grounds and the sea, he paused as he came out of the shadow of the trees and looked towards the height crowned by the Palazzo d'Oro, where from the upper windows twinkled a few lights showing the position of the room where the ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... they seemed scarcely to have proceeded from the same general stock. The different rules and regulations which presided over each department of art, followed of course; every mode of excellence, from the grand style of the Roman and Florentine schools down to the lowest rank of still life, had its due weight and value—fitted to some class or other; and nothing was thrown away. By this disposition of our art into classes, that perplexity and confusion, which I apprehend every artist has at some time experienced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is quite incomprehensible. The great political revolution of the nineties could never have been a product of the rigid Pigtail age, but it could very well have been a result of the Rococo in the Pigtail. In the Rococo there was still life, mad, ungovernable life; the Pigtail always had a Hippocratic face. The virtuosos of personality, the strange Rococo original types, were the forbears of the literary Storm and Stress writers, the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... rank, and, perhaps, of not so great merit, is the cold painter of portraits. But his correct and just imitation of his object has its merit. Even the painter of still life, whose highest ambition is to give a minute representation of every part of those low objects, which he sets before him, deserves praise in proportion to his attainment; because no part of this excellent art, so much the ornament ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... shrill cry that roused the factor and his people within, together with Sergeant Sewell, who had been sent out from headquarters to await Jim's arrival there. It was Sewell's hand which first felt Jim's heart and pulse, and found that there was still life left, even before it could be done by the doctor from headquarters, who had come to visit a sick ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... little poem, entitled 'The Warrigal' (Wild Dog) will prove that he (H. Kendall) observed animal life as faithfully as still life and landscape: ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... own but for that of all the words in existence, or as if the ground were giving way under him and he were falling irresistibly from space to space into an awful, infinite, boundless void. His mind refused to work; he asked himself, horrified, whether this was still life, dared call itself life; Nature's glorious structure seemed to him ravaged like a wall rent by a storm, the speaking mouth of all these people struck him as nothing but a chasm convulsively and repellently opening and shutting, darkness invaded his spirit, he burned with a feeling of shame, he ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... could have done nothing to make Hintock House dry and salubrious; and ruthless ignorance could have done little to make it unpicturesque. It was vegetable nature's own home; a spot to inspire the painter and poet of still life—if they did not suffer too much from the relaxing atmosphere—and to draw groans from the gregariously disposed. Grace descended the green escarpment by a zigzag path into the drive, which swept round beneath the slope. The exterior ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... hope had vanished, he turned towards the prostrate body, and knelt down to examine it. To his surprise there was still life, and, after her lips had been touched with water, the old woman showed symptoms of recovery. She had only been stunned ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... John Lewis, and William Hunt of the Old Water-colour, who, take him all in all, is the best painter of still life, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... who had not heard the introductory speech of the showman, absolutely thought that it was on inanimate figure made to imitate a man that was before them, as the orator always designated his piece of still life his mecanique, which means machine; in order to afford every one the benefit of a close examination, he lifted up his automaton, then flumped him directly opposite and close to the persons who formed part of the circle and whom he judged were most likely to throw ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... graces: possibly, too, they cannot look singularly without risks in the direction of slyness and brazen archness; or talk animatedly without dipping in slang. Conventional situations preserve them and interchange dignity with them; still life befits them; pre-eminently that judicial seat from which in briefest speech they deliver their judgements upon their foreign sisters. Jealousy it was that plucked Cecilia from her majestic place and caused her to envy in Renee things ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Laconia, and the porphyry from Egypt. We might descant upon the lavish wall-paintings, representing landscapes real and imaginary, scenes from mythology and semi-history, floating figures, genre pictures, and pictures of still life; or upon the mosaics in floor and wall depicting similar subjects and often serving to the occupants not so much in the place of pictorial art as in the place of wall-papers and of Brussels or Kidderminster carpets. We might speak of the profuse collections of statuary, ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... would be given over to the preliminary nervousness of the diocesan clergy, who would one after another look at that steel engraving of Jesus Christ preaching by the Sea of Galilee, and who when they had finished looking at that would look at those two oil paintings of still life, those rich and sombre accumulations of fish, fruit and game, that glowed upon the walls with a kind of sinister luxury. Waiting rooms are all much alike, the doctor's, the dentist's, the bishop's, the railway-station's; ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... of Bream. That young man, on whose dreamy calm the accident had made no impression whatever, had successfully established the equilibrium of the glass and the fork, and was now cautiously inserting beneath the latter a section of a roll, the whole forming a charming picture in still life. ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Manet's originality; that is just what I can't see. What he has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent execution. A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in the world; vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... his bed was a stout sheet of packing paper. On this lay, like one of those pictures in still life that one sees on suburban parlor walls, a tongue, some bread, a knife, a fork, salt, a corkscrew and a small ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... may conclude in Archelaos' court, And yet esteem the silken company So much sky-scud, sea-froth, earth-thistledown, For aught their praise or blame should joy or grieve. Strength amid crowds as late in solitude May lead the still life, ply the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... You are wrong, my father. I know myself. I am not of those to whom nature gives talents. I am born only for still life. I have no taste except for privacy. The convent is more suited to me than ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... charming rod and muttered spells prevail. Let sage Urganda wave the circling wand On barren mountains, or a waste of sand, 10 The desert smiles; the woods begin to grow, The birds to warble, and the springs to flow. The same dull sights in the same landscape mixed, Scenes of still life, and points for ever fixed, A tedious pleasure on the mind bestow, And pall the sense with one continued show; But as our two magicians try their skill, The vision varies, though the place stands ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... in 1797. Goethe's First Part had been five years in print when Spohr composed his "Faust," but it is based not on the great German poet's version of the legend, but on the old sources. This opera has still life, though it is fitful and feeble, in Germany, and was produced in London by a German company in 1840 and by an Italian in 1852, when the composer conducted it; but I have never heard of a representation in America. Between Spohr's ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... the pleasure of escape?" said a cool voice in her ear, as her feet were planted on dry land. "A little excitement spices our still life ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... it, and choose for our work only such material as in some way indicates life, either directly, as in trees, animals, or figures, or by association, and as explanation thereof, as in drapery and other accessories—never choosing a subject like those known to painters as "still life," such as bowls, fiddles, weapons, etc., unless, as I have said, they are associated with the more ...
— Wood-Carving - Design and Workmanship • George Jack
... he was able to make from nature in his early years, are chiefly of fishing-boats, barges, and other minor marine still life; and his better acquaintance with this kind of shipping than with the larger kind is very marked in the Liber Studiorum, in which there are five careful studies of fishing-boats under various circumstances; ...
— The Harbours of England • John Ruskin
... and fast and far they hied O'er dale and desert, wood and plain, each to his ingle-side! They hid themselves so closely that no hunter cared to roam Where these the timid subjects each had fashioned him a home! They were too wise for Teddy and they still life's blessings share, Though Teddy went a-huntin' them all loaded up ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... the Fifth, where she teaches too, they call her Waterfall. Nobody has ever given Frau Doktor M. a nickname, not even an endearing one. The only one that could possibly be given to her is Angel, and that could not be a real name, it's quite unmeaning. In the drawing class we are going to draw from still life, and, best of all, animal studies too, I ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... have sensations unusual to her,—such as must thrill through the boat upon the shore, when the little waves run up and kiss its sides, wooing it to the water, for which it was made. Chatty had been almost as much a piece of still life as the boat: but the baptism of the spray had been flung in her face, and dreams of triumphant winds and dazzling waves outside had crept into her cave. Minnie was conscious of no longings, but she knew that it was ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... returning into their former channel, she stood a silent spectator during that dreadful contest between the two roses, pursuing the tenor of still life till the civil wars of Charles I. when she took part with the Parliament, some of whose troops were stationed here, particularly at the Garrison and Camp-hill; the names of ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... than a mere city of ghosts and marble halls. It was a symbol of Rajput womanhood—strong and beautiful, withdrawn from the clamour of the market-place, given over to her dreams and her gods. For though kings have deserted Amber, the gods remain. There is still life in her temples and the blood of sacrifice on her altar stones. Therefore she must not be approached in the spirit of the tourist. And, emphatically, she must not be approached in a motor-car; at least so far as Thea's guests were concerned. Of course one knew she ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... wings. Rising from amongst the dirty litter of the floor were lay figures: one in the frock of a Vallombrosan monk, strangely surmounted by a helmet with barred visor, another smothered with brocade and skins hastily tossed over it. Amongst this heterogeneous still life, several speckled and white pigeons were perched or strutting, too tame to fly at the entrance of men; three corpulent toads were crawling in an intimate friendly way near the door-stone; and a white rabbit, apparently the ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... think, affect him in much the same way that those magazines do me, and I wonder if every one, except a dyspeptic, doesn't secretly like to hear and see these very things! Could it be the reason people used to paint so much still life?—baskets of fruit, a hunter's game-bag, a divided melon, etc. I frankly own that they would thrill me more if I knew their market price, so that I might be imagining what delightful meals I could offer my family without straining the household purse, which is my excuse for the intimate details concerning ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... infallible principles of light and colour which Rubens had so successfully disseminated in the Netherlands, were soon found in every department of art. Landscapes, portraits, drolls, and even the dullest and most uninteresting objects of still life, possess irresistible charms and fascination from the magic of those principles. Rembrandt, who, it is said, was never at Venice, might, notwithstanding, have seen, without going out of his country, many pictures of the Venetian school. ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet
... did not go much to Willey Farm at this time. And in the autumn exhibition of students' work in the Castle he had two studies, a landscape in water-colour and a still life in oil, both of which had first-prize awards. He was ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... gentlemen came to him he fixed his eyes upon them in a cold, indifferent way, and not a quiver in his face disclosed any interest in them. Motionless and pale as death the boy lay upon his bed, and only the breath that came hot and in gasps from his breast disclosed that there was still life in ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... cry out. But no; I see his hair far down, close under the stern of the boat I plunge in, and diving, grasp it and bring him to the surface. The boat has forged ahead. With difficulty I get him alongside, and we are hauled on board. The young man has still life in him, but cannot speak. We pull back to the ship, more than once narrowly escaping being swamped. It is some time before the stranger can speak. Even then he does not seem willing to say much. He does not ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... frightened at the situation. He found that even over the level spaces he could scarce drag his snow-shoes, but this had ceased to alarm him as he had been alarmed at first. He went on, hour after hour, weaker and weaker. Within himself there was still life which reasoned that if death were to come it could not come in a better way. It at least promised to be painless— even pleasant. The sharp, stinging pains of hunger, like little electrical knives piercing him, were gone; he ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... whom Clara last remembered with her baby in her lap, beautiful and almost as inanimate as a statue? There was scarcely more change from the long-frocked infant to the bustling important sprite, than from that fair piece of still life to the active house-mother. Unruffled grace was innate; every movement had a lofty, placid deliberation and simplicity, that made her like a disguised princess; and though her beauty was a little worn, what it had lost in youth was far ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sure"—laughing. "At all events I shall never be satisfied with still life like our ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... rather than of genius or feeling. He retained the regular, habitual impressions of actual objects, but he could not follow the rapid flights of fancy, or the strong movements of passion. That is, he was to the poet what the painter of still life is to the painter of history. Common sense sympathizes with the impressions of things on ordinary minds in ordinary circumstances: genius catches the glancing combinations presented to the eye of fancy, under the influence of passion. It is the province of the didactic reasoner to ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... silver arranged in proper array in wall closets, cabinets, and sideboards are the most appropriate decorations of the dining-room. It is not at all necessary that there should be pictures on the wall of game, fruit and flowers, or "still life" studies of vegetables and kitchen utensils. Indeed, these have become so expected that a change is quite a relief to a guest, who would welcome even the death's head that was the invariable ornament of the Egyptian feasts. Any pictures which are lively and cheerful ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... again, he first turned around for the tea by his bedside, then stared in front of him, wondering if these things which he saw were indeed displayed through an upraised blind. There was the marsh—a picture of still life—winding belts of sea creeping, serpent-like, away from him towards the land, with broad pools, in whose bosom, here and there, were flashes of a feeble sunlight. There were the clumps of wild lavender he had so often ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... what we could while there was still life left in the herd, but the cattle were too far gone for droving. We managed to collect a hundred or so—sent them in trucks from Crocodile Creek Terminus, for boiling down and netted about thirty shillings a head on them. That was all. I guess that—by this time, out of my eleven thousand head with ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... ANTONIO BARBIERI (1603-1649), was a celebrated painter of still life and animals. He chose for his subjects fruits, flowers, insects and animals, which he painted after nature with a lively tint of colour, great tenderness of pencil, and a strong character of truth ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... general indignation. But Schaunard had no self respect, above all in the matter of lobsters, and as there was still a portion left, he had the audacity to put it on one side, saying that he would do for a model for a still life ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... substantialness, flesh and blood, plenum; physical condition. matter, body, substance, brute matter, stuff, element, principle, parenchyma [Biol.], material, substratum, hyle^, corpus, pabulum; frame. object, article, thing, something; still life; stocks and stones; materials &c 635. [Science of matter] physics; somatology^, somatics; natural philosophy, experimental philosophy; physicism^; physical science, philosophie positive [Fr.], materialism; materialist; physicist; somatism^, somatist^. Adj. material, bodily; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... did not shine; but the light was hard, white, glittering, and cold, the winds treacherous, the snow wild and restless. There was now comparatively little danger of being lost even in the fiercest storms, but still life in one of these little cabins had an isolation almost as terrible as that of a ship wedged amid the ice-floes of the ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... Gabrielle became familiar with a number of dining-rooms furnished in mahogany and horsehair and hung with opulent studies of still life in oils and engravings after Mr. Frith. The meal was usually served by the whiskered coachman, who wore, for the occasion, a waistcoat decorated with dark blue and yellow stripes, and there was always cake for lunch. After the port, which generally ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... the special knowledge of a lifetime, would be needed to copy—even to copy—this picture. Mr. So-and-so, R.A., could undoubtedly draw the bird; Mr. Such-another (equally R.A.) the bear; and scores of gentlemen the still life; but who would be the man to pull the whole thing together and make it the riotous, tossing cataract of colour and life that it is? And when it was done, some middle-aged person from the provinces, who had never seen a pineapple out of a plate, ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... has a passage not quite alien to the vein of Mrs. Radcliffe. Some remarks in the first chapter show that Smollett felt the censures on his brutality and "lowness," and he promises to seek "that goal of perfection where nature is castigated almost even to still life . . . where decency, divested of all substance, hovers about like ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... sketches; heads, still life, landscapes, all subjects alike interested the painter. A rugged bust of Verdi, over life size, modeled in plaster, stood in one corner. On an easel rested a spirited portrait of Maurel, ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... happen when you did. He had considerable powers of vivid expression, so that in this way he could make us see all he described. The class, freed from any unpleasant nervous tension, could draw this still life without flinching, and if any part was too difficult to draw, then my father would produce a simplified version on the blackboard to be copied instead. And he would also write on the blackboard any exceptionally difficult but grant-earning words, ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... conflict, and in which the former is realized through victory over the latter, would not destroy morality. What is inconsistent with the moral life is the conception of a world where there is no movement from evil to good, no evolution of character, but merely the stand-still life of "Rephan." But absolutely certain knowledge that the good is at issue with sin in the world, that there is no way of attaining goodness except through conflict with evil, and that moral life, as the ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... it occurred to Mr. Smith that it would be interesting to revive the Cornhill and show that there was still life and force in the magazine which had published some of Thackeray's best essays, and his later novels—the magazine in which had appeared novels like Romola, with Leighton's illustrations, and in which Louis Stevenson had given to the world those ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... colour from cloth exposed to the weather; nor is it probable that, after the failure of his early attempt to play the deliverer to Israel, he nourished further designs of that sort. He appears to have settled down quietly to be Jethro's son-in-law, and to have lived a modest, still life of humble toil. He had flung away fair prospects,—and what had he made of it? The world would say 'Nothing,' as it ever does about those who despise material advantages and covet higher good. Looking after sheep ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... war pictures in the past have been merely pictures that happened to represent war. Paolo Uccello's battle scenes are but pretexts for his peculiar version of the visible world. They might as well be still life for all the effect the subject has had upon his treatment of it. Leonardo, in his lost battle picture, was no doubt dramatic, and expressed in it his infinite curiosity; he has left notes about the manner in which fighting men and horses ought to be represented, but he had this detached curiosity ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... and the outwitting of the wolf. Such fables did not remain special to German national literature, but became popular subjects in the literature of the whole world; and it is a significant fact that they afterwards took root especially in Flanders, where the taste for still life and delight in Nature has always found a home, and which became the nursery, in later times, of ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... most serious case. The clerk still lay there motionless, and only the blood-stained froth at his mouth, stirring as he breathed, showed there was still life in the motionless body. The sergeant-major went up to the unconscious man and carefully placed his head on the haversack. He had never been able to endure this sickly fellow, but, by Jove, what he had done that day was first-class! It was grand! Would ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... Home" is right in keeping to still life. In the artistic home—to paraphrase Dr. Watts—every prospect pleases and only man is inartistic. In the picture, the artistic bedroom, "in apple green, the bedstead of cherry-wood, with a touch of turkey-red throughout the draperies," is charming. It need hardly ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... waist deep. It was just on this point that the enemy fire was concentrated. Those who got into the water, rifle in hand and heavy pack on back, generally made a dive forward riddled through and through, if there was still life in them to drown in a few seconds. Many were being hit before they had time to spring from the boats, their hands were thrown up in the air, or else they heaved helplessly over stone dead. All this I watched from the holes ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... had been a minute before the four, did not look back. There were still life and strength in them, and the power to run. The Ohio could not be far away now, and they ought to strike ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... death in such a scene. It is only that of slumber! for the ocean undulates even when at rest, and sails flap gently even when there is no wind. Besides this, on the particular morning to which we call attention, a species of what we may call "still life" was presented by a mighty iceberg—a peaked and towering mountain of snowy white and emerald blue—which floated on the sea not a quarter of a mile off on the starboard bow. Real life also was presented ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... a continuance of the Greek, characterized by dark and rich backgrounds, which were frequently black, red or deep yellow and dark blue, on which figures and landscapes, or animals, or groups from still life, were executed in bright colorings of powerful contrasts. Black and white were used, and later, when the Byzantine artists and craftsmen found their way to Western Italy, they spread this love of bold coloring, so that at the dawn of the Renaissance ...
— Color Value • C. R. Clifford
... to paint a companion piece to a Rembrandt; Schutz, who diligently elaborated landscapes of the Rhine country, in the manner of Sachtlebens; and Junker, who executed with great purity flower and fruit pieces, still life, and figures quietly employed, after the models of the Dutch. But now, by the new arrangement, by more convenient room, and still more by the acquaintance of a skilful artist, our love of art was again quickened and animated. This artist was Seekatz, a pupil ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... writ to you, and desired to be raised from dumb and still Parts; I desire, if you give him Motion or Speech, that you would advance me in my Way, and let me keep on in what I humbly presume I am a Master, to wit, in representing human and still Life together. I have several times acted one of the finest Flower-pots in the same Opera wherein Mr. Serene is a Chair; therefore, upon his promotion, request that I may succeed him in the Hangings, with ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... dispossessed of the asylum where I first found shelter, as the previous tenant returned. I was able to purchase material and apparel. But what was I to paint, and where to sell the product? My hand was out, I discovered, so I set to studying still life, and painting those of my friends who had ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... struggled through the arresting creepers and undergrowth to where the stag lay feebly moving its limbs. Seizing one horn he performed the hallal, that is, he cut its throat to let blood while there was still life in the animal, muttering the short Mussulman creed as he did so. For his religion enjoins this hygienic practice—borrowed by the Prophet from the Mosaic law—to guard against long-dead carrion being eaten. At the touch of the ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... years before, been struck by lightning; the top of the tree had been shattered, and was withered up, but there was still life left in it for centuries to come. As I was coming up to it, a cloud passed over the moon: it was very dark under its thick branches. At first I noticed nothing special; but I glanced on one side, and my heart fairly failed ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... action, in movement,—how they appear to others,—he cannot know. The eye that looks around upon a landscape sees everything but itself. It is just as a man may look in the glass and see himself there every day; but he sees only the framework, only the "still life" in his face; he does not see it in the free play of expression,—in the strong workings of thought and feeling. I was one day sitting with Robert Walsh in Paris, and there was a large mirror behind him. Suddenly he said, "Ah, what a vain fellow ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... not know where to look, in the whole range of contemporary fictitious literature, for pictures in which the sober and the brilliant tones of Nature blend with more exquisite harmony than in those which are set in every chapter of "Adam Bede." Still life—the harvest-field, the polished kitchens, the dairies with a concentrated cool smell of all that is nourishing and sweet, the green, the porches that have vines about them and are pleasant late in the afternoon, and deep woods thrilling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... honours; a man who had acquired his fortune by such crimes, that his consciousness of them impelled him to cut his own throat.' BOSWELL. 'You will recollect, Sir, that Dr. Robertson said, he cut his throat because he was weary of still life; little things not being sufficient to move his great mind.' JOHNSON, (very angry.) 'Nay, Sir, what stuff is this! You had no more this opinion after Robertson said it, than before. I know nothing ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... plaudits bestowed upon the Siege of Gibraltar, there is not much risk in hazarding the opinion that Keyse took more pride in the picture-gallery of his own paintings than in any other feature of his establishment. The canvases included representations of all kinds of still life, and, thanks to the recording pen of J. T. Smith, that enthusiastic lover of old London, it is still possible to make the round of the gallery in the company of the artist-proprietor. Mr. Smith visited the gardens when public patronage had declined ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... written and recorded in letters of liquid gold!" The bystanders were astounded at his words and the King marvelled and said to him, "What ails thee, O Silent Man? Explain to us thy words !" "O King of the age," said the Barber, "I swear by thy beneficence that there is still life in this Gobbo Golightly!" Thereupon he pulled out of his waist belt a barber's budget, whence he took a pot of ointment and anointed therewith the neck of the Hunchback and its arteries. Then he took a pair of iron tweezers and, inserting them into the Hunchback's ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... poets still living who belong to the same class of excellence, and of whom I shall here say a few words; I mean Crabbe, and Robert Bloomfield, the author of the Farmer's Boy. As a painter of simple natural scenery, and of the still life of the country, few writers have more undeniable and unassuming pretensions than the ingenious and self-taught poet, last-mentioned. Among the sketches of this sort I would mention, as equally distinguished for delicacy, faithfulness, and naivete, his description of lambs ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... never get nowheres," I tells him, "but you're startin' off with a win on that bet!" I points at the model for still life again. "When does that guy get up?" ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... attraction, in the great flotillas of linked barges and canal-boats which slowly pass like floating and vulgar Venices. If, as is often the case, they lie across the track, we shall have plenty of opportunity to observe at our leisure their still life. I have always thought that canal-life—by reason of its amphibiousness, its phenomenal slowness, its monotony amid endless change, its solitude amid busy and peopled scenes which it is always touching but never entering—must be a unique existence, a modus vivendi quite apart ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... stop trying to revive Siegfried so soon? I begged and begged you to go on. There was still life in him. He would have come to," ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... merit of the modern masters may be fairly examined into, it has been thought proper to place some admired works of the most eminent old masters in this room, and along the passage through the yard.' Among these are 'A Barge' in still life, by Vandertrout. He cannot be properly called an English artist; but not being sufficiently encouraged in his own country, he left Holland with William the Third, and was the first artist who settled in Harp ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... of a group of dandies of the Directory—gay Incroyables who chuck the country damsels under the chin, rouse their swains to jealous wrath and otherwise misconduct themselves. Rohbe's pictures of still life are perfect feasts of coloring, warm, rich and glowing as the heart of a crimson rose brimming with the sunshine and sweetness of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... the city. The house they had been building in one of the avenues was completed, and ready for its furniture. There was a promise of endless shopping excursions and important business of all kinds. The lady was heartily tired of her present still life, and found the prospect of returning to town, ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... embraced the art of Raphael, partly from a notion of its ease, partly from an inborn distrust of offices. He scorned to bear the yoke of any regular schooling; and proceeded to turn one half of the dining-room into a studio for the reproduction of still life. There he amassed a variety of objects, indiscriminately chosen from the kitchen, the drawing-room, and the back garden; and there spent his days in smiling assiduity. Meantime, the great bulk of empty building overhead lay, like a load, upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the violets, white and blue, Bloom in sunshine and the dew, Tenderly living their still life through, Where the deep-cut leaves of the liverwort grow, And the great white flowers of the dogwood blow Over the pale anemones;— Cometh a perfume spicily shed From the wild Azalea's full-wreathed head ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... needs no previous inquiry into the relative period and circumstances of the artists who created it. The landscape background, the rocky defile, the wooded declivity, and the trees laden with fruit, are all eminently beautiful. The eye would almost lose itself in this rich sense of still life if it were not constantly led back to ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... proficient in the art of painting, and drew King James II, and his Queen; which pieces are also highly applauded by Mr. Dryden. She drew several history pieces, also some portraits for her diversion, exceeding well, and likewise some pieces of still life. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... claymore, a broken spinning-wheel, etcetera, all of which were piled up and so mingled with the darkness of the vault above, that imagination might have deemed the spot a general rendezvous for the aged and the maimed of "still life." ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... I know not what else; then all kinds of town life—courtyards of inns, starting of mail coaches, interiors of shops, house-buildings, fairs, elections, etc.; then all kinds of inner domestic life—interiors of rooms, studies of costumes, of still life, and heraldry, including multitudes of symbolical vignettes; then marine scenery of every kind, full of local incident; every kind of boat and method of fishing for particular fish, being specifically drawn, round the whole coast of England—pilchard ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... sets of glasses. He said that he could do nothing more for her, as the trouble was organic; that she must wear glasses constantly; that if she attempted to go without, she would become either blind or insane. The glasses were in operation, and still life had become a burden from constant pain, when Christian Science came to our relief. Mrs. A—— had not in years read for two consecutive minutes, and could not use her eyes in sewing at all. The lady that told us ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... hall they are introduced to the viands, all thought to partake of;—which have arrived too late, and are now displayed in their primitive state—a picture of still life; whilst the guests—a picture of disappointment—have to put up with odds and ends, concocted to meet the emergency, ending with a series of plum-dumplings, in place of the legitimate large pudding. However, the indigent relatives, who prefer the cold corners, ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... clear that art-definitions of this character can be comprehended by the very meanest capacity and, indeed, may be said to appeal to it. For the perfect development, however, of this pattern-producing faculty a severe training is necessary. The art student must begin by painting china, crockery, and 'still life' generally. He should rule his straight lines and employ actual measurements wherever it is possible. He will also find that a plumb-line comes in very useful. Then he should proceed to Greek sculpture, for from pottery to Phidias is only one step. Ultimately he will arrive at the living model, ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... upon the Dahar-es-Salahh, a mountain whence the prospect of all Philistia and the coast from almost Gaza to Carmel expands like a map—no, rather like a thing of still life before the eye, with the two seas, namely, the Mediterranean and the Dead Sea, visible at once, with likewise the mountains of Samaria and Gerizim, besides the Moab country eastward, and Jerusalem and ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... still life ... the high-lights shine Hard and sharp on the bottles: the wine Stands firmly solid in the glasses, Smooth yellow ice, through which there passes The lamp's bright pencil of down-struck light. The fruits metallically gleam, Globey in their heaped-up ...
— The Defeat of Youth and Other Poems • Aldous Huxley
... pictures in the widest gold frames, all sorts: landscapes, portraits, cats, dogs, groups of still life, good, bad, and indifferent massed together on a wall covered with large-patterned scarlet and gilt Japanese leather paper. Guarding the doors and staircase were imitation suits of armour on dummy men, standing under some really beautiful Toledo blades ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... come back again. Brokers' shops, which would seem to have been established by humane individuals, as refuges for destitute bugs, interspersed with announcements of day-schools, penny theatres, petition-writers, mangles, and music for balls or routs, complete the 'still life' of the subject; and dirty men, filthy women, squalid children, fluttering shuttlecocks, noisy battledores, reeking pipes, bad fruit, more than doubtful oysters, attenuated cats, depressed dogs, and anatomical fowls, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... young men got up Cissy and Elsie forgot Mildred. An angry expression came upon her face and she went into the house. The walls had been painted all over—landscapes, still life, nude figures, rustic, and elegiac subjects. Every artist had painted something in memory of his visit, and Mildred sought vaguely for what Mr. Mitchell had painted. Then, remembering that he had chosen to walk about with the Turner girl, ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... one was a 'still life.' Papa viewed it in some perplexity. 'Ah,' he said at length, 'just as I thought. I have been anticipating this for some time.' He adjusted his spectacles. 'The tendency of modern Art—that is to say the best Art—is towards a return to more classic forms. Sargent, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, May 6, 1914 • Various
... the lake. There it hung on the rim of that stainless crystal, while a thin ring of silver light noiselessly expanded toward the shore. The sun was down. All the birds of heaven said so with their bubbling throats. Bewildered with the delicious conclusion of this illustration of still life, I turned homeward, dispelling the mirage. Then such a ride home in the keen air, while a pillar of smoke rose over the little cabin, telling me which of the hundred bowers of autumn sheltered ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard |
