kit-cat

or kit-kat

[ kit-kat ]

noun

1. any of a series of half-length portraits of members of the Kit-Cat Club that were painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller between 1702 and 1717, measuring almost uniformly 28 × 36 inches (71 × 91 centimeters), characteristically portray the head, upper torso, and hands, and are now in the National Gallery, London.

Example Sentences

The Kit-Cat pictures were painted early in the eighteenth century, and about the year 1710 were brought to this spot, but the room I have been describing was not built till ten or fifteen years afterwards.

From Project Gutenberg

Here I found the Kit-Cat Club-room, nearly as it existed in the days of its glory.

From Project Gutenberg

"There's romance enough for you, Kit-cat!" she exclaimed, pointing to a gorge where a swollen rivulet was dashing over a rocky bed.

From Project Gutenberg

Resting on the tiller was just such another heavy, red-faced, dreamy man, staring straight before him as he sucked at a short black pipe, while forming herself into a living kit-cat picture was the woman who appeared to be his wife, her lower portions being down the square hatch that led into the cabin where the fire burned, whose smoke escaped through a little funnel.

From Project Gutenberg

The dimity curtains were drawn aside, the casement window was opened and carefully hooked back, and the kit-cat living portrait of a pleasant plump little woman of about forty appeared in the frame.

From Project Gutenberg