a. [f. STATUE sb. + -ESQUE, after picturesque.] Having the qualities of a statue or of sculpture.
a. 1834. Coleridge, Notes & Lect. (1849), I. 71. Their productions were, if the expression may be allowed, statuesque, whilst those of the moderns are picturesque.
1849. Thackeray, Pendennis, xvii. An image of statuesque piety and rigid devotion.
1855. Smedley, H. Coverdale, xlvii. He had always admitted her statuesque grace.
1858. Carlyle, Fredk. Gt., V. ii. (1872), II. 71. Statuesque immovability of posture.
1891. N. & Q., Ser. VII. XII. 99. The more reserved and statuesque formulæ of the Western Churches.
1905. Sir F. Treves, Other Side of Lantern, II. xxx. (1906), 190. The statuesque native soldiers who stand as sentries.
Hence Statuesquely adv., Statuesqueness.
1833. Coleridge, Table-t., 1 July. Euripides … embraces within the scope of the tragic poet many passions … which Sophocles seems to have considered as incongruous with the ideal statuesqueness of the tragic drama.
1868. Browning, Ring & Bk., IX. 802. Hold, as it were, a deprecating hand, Statuesquely, in the Medicean mode.
1886. G. Allen, Maimie’s Sake, xxiii. He had never before seen her … look so … statuesquely beautiful.
1888. Lafcadio Hearn in Harper’s Mag., Aug., 330/1. Each lithe figure, gilded by the morning sun, has a statuesqueness and a luminosity impossible to paint in words.
