tea-boards

Updated: May 19, 2025

And in another ode he derides the artist's pictures as 'tea-boards, 'varnished waiters, and avows that his rocks are 'paste-board, while his trees resemble 'brass wigs, and his fleecy flocks 'mops. Probably the quiet of his studio oppressed our painter somewhat. The simple effects attainable in an easel-picture did not satisfy him.

Dutton Cook - Art in England: Notes and Studies

Falcon painted a landscape or two out of his imagination. The dealers to whom he took them declined them; one advised the gentleman painter to color tea-boards. "That's your line," said he. "The world has no taste," said the gentleman painter: "but it has got lots of vanity: I'll paint portraits."

Charles Reade - A Simpleton