Pose

“ The figure is full of life, the pose expresses vigor, action, pride, the head, round in form, indicates intellect. The eyes are crystal, in a setting of bronze, giving a startling look of life to the regard. ”

“ You should not, however, take any pose as a pretense. Whatever poses you employ to augment the things you say should be used as means for the better communication of truth, not to falsify in any degree. And you will need to be extremely careful lest you over-do a particular pose and suggest affectation. Doubtless you have characteristic poses. Analyze yourself. Determine what your habits of pose mean to other people. Then make such changes in your characteristic poses as will signify only the best traits you have. ”

“ By 'an easy pose' one that represents a simple position is meant. If we begin by trying to draw some one with body huddled together, legs crossed, neck twisted, and eyes gazing into ours, we shall soon be very confused. ”

“ Does he ever seek a pose that is characteristic of the model, a pose that the model repeats oftener than any other?—Never. He advances the foot, puts the hand on the hip, etc., with a view to rendering his idea. ”

“ But a tragic element was brought into his life by the conflicting strains in his own character. A love of pose, which found vent in eccentricities of dress, in extravagant paradox and biting epigram, gave him social notoriety. ”

“ For, as I have already indicated when distinguishing the head from other parts of the body, it is undeniable that the spiritual expression of the form is restricted to the face and the pose and movement of the whole, to the general mien, which is pre-eminently eloquent by virtue of the arms, hands, and position of the legs. ”

“ And the fine portrait will express the larger and subordinate the petty individualities, will give you what is of value, and subordinate what is trivial in a person's appearance.
The pose of the head is a characteristic feature about people that is not always given enough attention in portraits. The habitual cast of thought affects its carriage to a very large degree. ”

“ And with many ladies who would not, I hope, object to one's saying that their principal characteristic was the charm of their appearance, 251this point of view offers, perhaps, one of the best opportunities of a successful painting. A pose is selected that makes a good design of line and colour—a good pattern—and the character of the sitter is not allowed to obtrude or mar the symmetry of the whole considered as a beautiful panel. ”

“ There is a purpose in the gaze which these eyes extend to the observer, and the attitude, although intended to be a natural one, is quite evidently studied and assumed. It is intended to give full play to the face and eyes, and to reveal the graceful curves of the arms and the slender beauty of the fingers. ”

“ It is the position of the eye that determines the expression of the head, for it is the direction of the eye that tells us on which side the object of veneration, suspicion, etc., is supposed to be. The shoulders should be observed here. They are the thermometer of passion; the stronger the emotion, the higher they should be raised. ”

“ However, although no dumb trait, considered in an isolated point of view, can be an expression of the mind, a face composed entirely of these kinds of features can be characterized in its entireness by precisely the same reason as a face which is speaking only as an expression of sensuous nature can be nevertheless characteristic. ”

“ The prig is a very interesting psychological study, and though of all poses a moral pose is the most offensive, still to have a pose at all is something. ”

“ We judge of the figure or shape of bodies, chiefly by the variations of light and shade; and our associations taken thence are so strong, as that we are easily imposed upon by a just imitation of the light and shades belonging to each shape and figure, in their several situations with respect to the quarter from which the illumination proceeds. ”

“ If, for example, the human body is represented, the colors and lines employed should be so disposed that they decorate the surface of the picture and hold us there through their sheer rhythm and quality ”

“ There is new strength, repose of mind and inspiration in fresh apparel. ”

“ but his physiognomy had an air of requesting your attention, which it rewarded according to the charm you found in blue eyes of remarkable fixedness, the eyes of a complexion other than his own, and a jaw of the somewhat angular mould which is supposed to bespeak resolution. ”

“ What is the picture, collectively seen, you ask, but the portrait, more or less elaborated, of a multitudinous People, of a social and political order?—so that the effect is, for all the world, as if, with the body and the limbs, the hands and feet and coat and trousers, all the accessories of the figure showily painted, the neat white oval of the face itself were innocent of the brush. ”

“ Four faces among the portraits of modern men, great or small, strike us as supremely beautiful; not merely in expression, but in the form and proportion and harmony of features: Shakespeare, Raffaelle, Goethe, Burns. One would expect it to be so; for the mind makes the body, not the body the mind; and the inward beauty seldom fails to express itself in the outward, as a visible sign of the invisible grace or disgrace of the wearer. ”

“ I am thinking of a portrait of a lady, and she is turning the leaves of a book, and in the lowered eyes, and the movement of the hand, there is more than arrested movement, there is an expression of an attitude consciously assumed which ordinarily would have been an unconscious one, and so accurate is the painting, that the sitter is detected as it were in this self-consciousness. ”

“ From that day forward a heaviness lay on the spirit of Mark that could not be scattered. He felt, he said to himself, as though he had meddled light-heartedly with something far deeper and more dangerous than he had supposed—like a child that has aroused some evil beast that slept. He had dark dreams too. The figure that he had seen among the rocks seemed to peep and beckon him, with a mocking smile, over perilous places, where he followed unwilling. ”

“ The face is slightly bearded, the features massive but finely formed, and with a most noble expression. Indeed, where shall we find in classical art any head in which such majesty is combined with the traits of individual likeness? ”

“ The expression of the face is all human, but wrought to the very limit of celestial enthusiasm. The wonderful richness of the coloring, the exquisite ripe fulness of the limbs, the passionate devotion of the kindling features, combine to make it the faultless ideal of a perfect human being in youth. ”

“ The face is singular, one that strikes at a first sight and grows upon the observer; a brilliant eager, old face, keen and gentle, with a preponderance of brow and head; clear bird-like eyes, eloquent excitable mouth, with a look of nervous and fluent power; the whole lighted through as it were from behind with a strange and pure kind of smile, touched too with something of an impatient prospective rapture. ”

“ He continued to observe, that what is usually called character in a face, is probably excess in some of its parts, and particularly of those which are under the influence of the mind, the leading passion of which marks some feature for its own. A perfectly symmetrical face bears no mark of the influence of either the passions or the understanding, and reminds you of Prometheus’s clay without his fire. ”

“ Of all parts of the body, the face is most considered and regarded, as is natural from its being the chief seat of expression and the source of the voice. It is also the chief seat of beauty and of ugliness, and throughout the world is the most ornamented. ”

“ For however handsome and merry may be the face, however rich may be the background, in the first rough sketch of each portrait, yet with every added stroke of the brush, with every tiny readjustment of the "values," with every modification of the chiaroscuro, the eyes looking out at you grow more disquieting. ”

“ And, as I fixed my attention upon them more and more closely, heaven aid me! the features of a human face grew more and more distinctly traceable and visible, just as when, on looking at a distorted picture through a lens specially constructed, all its lines and effects then, and not till then, grow clear and sharp. ”

“ The face puts the whole world behind it. It does everything but speak—nay, you are ready to swear that it is going to speak! And so this chance jumbling together of a few stones has produced a sculpture before which Art hangs her head. ”

“ They have finely-chiselled features, deep, rather large and expressive eyes, slightly bronzed complexions, and in every curious look, gaze, or expression, there is an easy, modest dignity, such as I have never before seen, even among the rarest few. In every face there is a deep and real joy ”

“ When a shape, however faintly resembling her incomparable elegance of form, passed before my eye, or a voice, in the slightest degree reminding me of her noble tones, reached my ear, I felt an irresistible pang, that, for the time, embittered all the scene around me. ”

“ Well, if you have carefully studied your portrait in the mirror, I think you must have discovered how large a part the contrast of light and shadow plays in the appearance of the figure, and therefore, what an equally important part it plays in producing an illusion of reality in the picture. I do not forget that an artist by simply drawing an outline with a pen or pencil can also suggest to us the appearance of an object. ”

“ Walk along a crowded street and watch the different faces of the men and women as they pass by—grey faces, drab faces, white faces, yellow faces, faces sad and cross, and lined and dull, faces by the thousand blank of any expression at all, and then here and there, at rare, rare intervals, a live face that speaks. ”

“ The face, small like the face of an old, old child, waxed finer and more spiritual, yet ever more startlingly did it bear the stamp of that individuality which the spirit had held so cheap—the earthly so impenetrated with the spiritual part that the face had become a sublimation. ”

“ The semblance of a human face to be formed on the side of a mountain, or in the fracture of a small stone, by a lusus naturae. The face is an object of curiosity for years or centuries, and by and by a boy is born, whose features gradually assume the aspect of that portrait. ”

“ We miss our artist’s beautiful fluent writing, and the type produces a bald staring impression on the beholder. When, too, the head and shoulders of a figure appear above the placard and the feet and legs below, as in one or two plates, we are irresistibly reminded of sandwich men. ”

“ So a protrait of a well-known face gratifies us. Turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it any time these twenty years! ”

“ The full face of the youth is much more taking and attractive, than the somewhat too loose, too protracted half-face; the fore-part of the face in its slightest motion, tells of a highly sensitive, thoughtful, inventive, untaught, inward goodness, of a softly tremulous, wrong-abhorring love of liberty—an eager vivacity. ”

“ It is quite possible to stipple in a head or an arm with such beautiful shades of light and tint that the essential shape of the nose, head, and arm, is forgotten. In other words, the drawing is lost. ”

“ How often have I not come upon a corbel of stone carved into the shape of a face, and that face had upon it either horror or laughter or great sweetness or vision, and I have looked at it as I might have looked upon a living face, save that it was more wonderful than most living faces. ”

“ If you do recall the features, and say that an eye is blue, a chin sharp, a nose short, or a cheek sunken, I fancy that you do not succeed well in giving the impression of the person,—not so well as when you interpret at once to the heart the essential moral qualities of the face—its humor, gravity, sadness, spirituality. ”

“ A hand, an eye, or any portion of a statue lying apart from the rest, would look beautiful to no one. But if each be restored to its own place, the beauty of proportion, until now almost unperceived, would strike even the most uncultivated. ”

“ A man's face, with its dead, glassy eyes and streaming hair, was presented to his gaze—and he instantly sprang to his feet and ran, leaving easel, canvas, palette, and brushes to take care of themselves. ”

“ I consider everything from every point of view and walk around it with a light in my hand.—I have contemplated love in the old-fashioned light, as a bit of sculpture more or less perfect. How is the arm? ”

“ You may note how the passionate action of the servant is given by the deep shadows under and above her arm, relieving its curves in all their length, and by the recess of shade under the cheek and chin, which lifts the face. ”

“ A worn look had grown over the little face, and it made its charm for him stronger. For pain and time, which trace deep lines and write a story on a human face, have a strangely different effect on one face and another. ”

“ If you are not satisfied with your first attempts at a silhouette, do not despair, try again. Make another start—sketch a fresh model. Do not expect to succeed without practice, for remember you are up against a difficult problem. You are not merely trying to depict 'a nose,' 'a face,' 'a head'; but a very special nose, face and head. ”

“ Having thus defined what we mean by the position of objects with regard to the eye, it is evident, that as the real figure of a body consists in the situation of its several parts with regard to one another, so its visible figure consists in the position of its several parts with regard to the eye; and as he that hath a distinct conception of the situation of the parts of the body with regard to one another, must have a distinct conception of its real figure ”