Section

GLOSSARY OF ART TERMS

Edited by Mark Quinlan

  1. A
  2. B
  3. C
  4. D
  5. E
  6. F
  7. G
  8. H
  9. I
  10. J
  11. K
  12. L
  13. M
  14. N
  15. O
  16. P
  17. Q
  18. R
  19. S
  20. T
  21. U
  22. V
  23. W
  24. X
  25. Y
  26. Z
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Laid Paper

A type of paper having a ribbed texture imparted by the manufacturing process. In the 19th century its use diminished, as it was largely supplanted by wove paper. However, Laid paper is still commonly used by artists as a support for charcoal drawings.

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Landscape

A painting or drawing which depicts outdoor scenery. Landscapes can vary widely in what is depicted. They typically include trees, streams, buildings, crops, mountains, wildlife, rivers and forests.

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Lead Point

A stylus of lead, or lead alloy, it is the only metal that will mark unprepared paper. With the two advantages of being easily erased and of producing only a faint line, lead point was used in the 15th and 16th centuries for preliminary sketching in preparation for a drawing in another medium. Lead point’s [...]

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Les Fauves

French for ‘The Wild Beasts’ was a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century modern artists whose works emphasised painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only three years, 1905-07, [...]

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Life Class

Academic art lessons in which students draw, paint, or sculpt the human body from a live model.

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Lightfast

Pigments which are resistant to fading or other changes due to light. If carefully protected, some pigments will stay virtually unchanged for decades, even centuries, whilst other are fugitive and will fade or darken, if exposed to direct sunlight for even a short period of time. Received wisdom holds that no painting, or other work [...]

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Linear Perspective

A method of depicting three-dimensional depth on a flat or two-dimensional surface. Linear perspective has two main precepts: Firstly, forms that are meant to be perceived as faraway from the viewer are made smaller than those meant to be seen as close. Secondly, parallel lines receding into the distance converge at a point on the horizon [...]

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Lithography

From the Greek lithos, meaning stone, and graphein, meaning to write, a printing technique that uses a flat slab of limestone or a metal plate as the transfer surface; a print made using this technique. To produce a lithograph, the artist draws on the transfer surface using a greasy medium. He then moistens the surface [...]

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London Group

In 1913 The London Group took over from the Camden Town Group the function of organising modern art exhibitions in Britain. Its stated aim was ‘to advance public awareness of contemporary visual art by holding exhibitions annually’. Its first president was Harold Gilman, one of the leading Camden Town painters. As an exhibiting society the [...]

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Loose Brushwork

Brushstrokes that are not blended into a smooth plane on a painting’s surface, but rather are differentiated and visible.

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Lost Wax

An ancient process used in metal casting that consists of making a wax model, coating it with a refractory to form a mould, heating until the wax melts and runs out of the mould, and then pouring metal into the vacant mould.