line of beauty

English

William Hogarth, The Painter and his Pug (1745), with “The LINE of BEAUTY” bottom-left.

Noun

line of beauty (plural lines of beauty)

1. (fine arts) An abstract line supposed to be beautiful in itself and absolutely; differently represented by different authors, often as a kind of elongated S (like the one drawn by Hogarth).
   • 1880, William Blake, “Public Address and Memoranda by Blake of his mode of Engraving”, in Life of William Blake, volume 2:

     Every line is the line of beauty; it is only fumble and bungle which cannot draw a line. This only is ugliness. That is not a line which doubts and hesitates in the midst of its course.

See also

• ogee

Further reading

• line of beauty on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “line of beauty”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)