Word: rakishness
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Effervescent, mildly rakish and not given to introspection, Gainsborough was a far cry from the intractability of other, more intense painters: he possessed, to a fault, the knack of not threatening the client, either by critical insight or expressive force. When he settled in Bath in 1759, he was determined to be the mirror of the upper 5% of England, the gratin who came there to take the waters, exchange scandal in the Pump Room and pursue their intrigues, sexual and fiscal, in the ambit of the great country houses of Wiltshire and Somerset. This was not a vocation...
...Dancing Legend John W. Bubbles, who created the role of Sportin' Life in Porgy and Bess, lifts a still rakish derby and a still raffish tenor in It Ain't Necessarily So. Wilson is now halting of step and Bubbles is confined to a chair. Their performances affirm that careers may be long to a particular age, but talent is ageless...
...guest has spilled some coffee on the table, and quicker than you can say Oops! the little woman in trousers and a rakish jockey cap has mopped up the mess. "There, that's fine," she says, looking down in satisfaction. "Viva towels are so much better than Bounty." Then, listening to herself, she laughs, hoots, cacklesthere are no mere giggles from this lady. "I sound like a television commercial...
They go aloft in spiffy Cessna 310s and cruise the highways in Cadillacs and Lincolns. In bays and harbors, they make waves with rakish speedboats and cabin cruisers. They are Florida's modestly paid drug agents; yet their planes, cars and boats are among the best that money can buy-certainly better than the usual Government issue. For good reason. The expensive equipment once belonged to the smugglers themselves...
...well as people. Once one has been through the show, the props of his still lifes, which were also the normal appurtenances of his home life, become like familiar faces: the patriarchal mass of his copper water urn, perched on its squat tripod; the white teapot with its rakish finial; the painted china that signaled his growing prosperity, and so on down to the last stoneware daubière, all signifying a world in which the eye could work without alienation or even strain...