What is "tableaus"

Usage examples of "tableaus".

Then, a series of grisly murders with the bodies displayed in peculiar tableaus shocks the tiny town.

All around them, tableaus of past lives were acted out, perhaps to the points of death.

Dominating the farthest wall was the Great Serpent of Dorillion, a ninety-foot-long sculpture in the form of a snake, upon which the entire history of the ancient Dorillion race had been carved in tableaus so small that many of them could not be seen without artificial magnification and enhancement.

When the ride had been in operation, the niches had been filled with tableaus meant to amuse or horrify or both: ghosts and goblins, ghouls and monsters, ax-wielding madmen standing over the prostrate bodies of their beheaded victims.