A kit-cat portrait or kit-kat portrait is a particular size of portrait, less than half-length, but including the hands. The name originates from a series of portraits which were commissioned from Godfrey Kneller for members of the Kit-Cat Club, to be hung in their meeting place at Barn Elms. Each canvas was thirty-six inches long, and twenty-eight wide The size is said to have been determined because the dining-room ceiling of the Kit-Kat Club was too low for half-size portraits of the members.
Famous quotes containing the word portrait:
“Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called “self-interestedness.” This was not a portrait of man “warts and all.” It was all wart.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)