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What is "easel"

Crossword clues for easel

easel
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
easel
noun
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ A cup stand consists of an easel to display the saucer of the cup sitting before it.
▪ He was seated at an easel.
▪ In one dim corner of the little box he thought he could see an easel, and a tiny unmade bed.
▪ Margarett got the children to paint, and in the ease of the country even Shaw set up an easel.
▪ Paul Collins uses various brushes, portable easels and aluminum frames to keep his canvas stretched.
▪ The conference room was composed of a large 11-shaped table with chairs, several flip chart easels, and a coffee pot.
▪ The maps were in rolls on an architect's easel in the corner of the office.
▪ The painting on the easel is a portrait.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Easel

Easel \Ea"sel\, n. [D. ezel ass, donkey, hence, easel, or G. esel; akin to E. ass. See Ass.] A frame (commonly) of wood serving to hold a canvas upright, or nearly upright, for the painter's convenience or for exhibition.

Easel picture, Easel piece, a painting of moderate size such as is made while resting on an easel, as distinguished from a painting on a wall or ceiling.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
easel

1590s, from Dutch ezel "easel," originally "ass," from Middle Dutch esel, from Latin asinus "ass" (see ass (n.1)); the comparison being of loading a burden on a donkey and propping up a painting or canvas on a wooden stand (compare sawhorse, French chevalet, Italian cavalletto).

Wiktionary
easel

n. An upright frame, typically on three legs, for displaying or supporting something, such as an artist’s canvas.

WordNet
easel

n. an upright tripod for displaying something (usually an artist's canvas)

Wikipedia
Easel

An easel is an upright support used for displaying and/or fixing something resting upon it, at an angle of about 20° to the vertical. In particular, easels are traditionally used by painters to support a painting while they work on it, normally standing up, and are also sometimes used to display finished paintings. Artists' easels are still typically made of wood, in functional designs that have changed little for centuries, or even millennia, though new materials and designs are available. Easels are typically made from wood, aluminum or steel.

Easel painting is a term in art history for the type of midsize painting that would have been painted on an easel, as opposed to a fresco wall painting, or a miniature created sitting at a desk, though perhaps also on an angled support. It does not refer to the way the painting is meant to be displayed; most easel paintings are intended for display framed and hanging on a wall.

In a photographic darkroom, an easel is used to keep the photographic paper in a flat or upright (horizontal, big-size enlarging) position to the enlarger.

Usage examples of "easel".

After Boots had clumped out, Blok turned his attention to the canvases over by the easel and began to go through them, tossing them aside in his fearful search for any more such drawings as on the scraps of paper clenched in his hand.

Lady Laura March night was becoming a regular visitor to Dilling ham Court, where she and Polly would walk together in the gardens or set their easels up with some idyllic aspect before them, in the hope of capturing it in watercolours or charcoal.

Kenneth set up his easel in the garden and began to paint old Etna, with its wreath of snow and the soft gray cloud of vapor that perpetually hovered over it.

Maigret, left on his own, paced slowly up and down the room, and stopped in front of an easel holding a gouache sketch.

I went bail for my brother who had contracted debts he was sure of paying, as he had several pictures on the easel which he had been ordered to paint by some of his rich and noble patrons.

He was, especially in easel pictures, a brilliant, vivacious brushman, full of dash and spirit, tempered by a large knowledge of what was true and pictorial.

Villa Pisani Stra, Palazzo Labia Scuola Carmina, Venice, Villa Valmarana, and at Wurtzburg, easel pictures Venice Acad.

Tiepolo, large fresco Villa Pisani Stra, Palazzo Labia Scuola Carmina, Venice, Villa Valmarana, and at Wurtzburg, easel pictures Venice Acad.

As he ducked back around the easel and returned to his work, Marie walked toward two white-trousered legs that showed beneath what he was doing, sporty trousers wrapped from the knee in gray cloth spatterdashes that buttoned down over black shoes.

Susan Stover watched her father walk to the easel and draw as he spoke.

On the easel a large unprimed canvas rested, somewhat unevenly due to the cant of a floor slanted enough that you could drop a marble in the kitchen and watch it roll slowly but inexorably to settle in the left-hand comer of the living room.

His unsmeared palette hooked over his left thumb, he stood before a large canvas on an easel and poked gently at it with a tiny brush.

She crossed to her easel and picked up her bloodred chalk, beginning to draw before Hal had left the room.

Miss Verney passing him with a very professional-looking campstool, easel and sketch-book.

Then he took up her campstool and easel, and they walked together alongside the Roman aqueduct to the centre of the town, under an avenue of tall, spreading plane trees, yellow with the first delicate leaves of Spring like the feathers of a newborn chick.