lay-figures

Luigi had arranged for his wife; in it she found easels, color-boxes, lay-figures, casts, pictures, portfolios, — in short, the paraphernalia of an artist.

The Vendetta 2007

Mary Axe: pressing on the road all the gaily-dressed ladies whom she could see from the window, and making them unconscious lay-figures for dolls, while she mentally cut them out and basted them.

Our Mutual Friend 2004

The problem, therefore, was to produce characters just sufficiently unlike lay-figures to excite and maintain a moderate interest, and to set them in motion by dint of a few incidents not absolutely unconnected, -- meanwhile to subject the principles and manners of which these characters were the incarnation to ceaseless satire and raillery.

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" Various

These men, who were but lay-figures to us at school, mere pegs of names to hang historic robes upon, thus interpreted by the living history of their portraits, the incidental illustrations of the places where they lived and moved and died, and the buildings and monuments they erected, become like the men of yesterday.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 27, January, 1860 Various

These are all old men: they are all men of education, and in the social position of gentlemen; but each has certain characteristics which the others have not: each has the distinctive individual flavor-perceptible, but indescribable, like the savor of a fruit -- which is wanting in Cooper's well-dressed and well-behaved lay-figures.

The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 Various

Studies, prints, clothes, and lay-figures were pawned to pay for the expenses of the work, and on October comes the entry: 'Directly after the Duke's letter came with its enclosed cheque, an execution was put in for the taxes.

Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century George Paston

Why, Eusebius, they have lay-figures, and dress them just as you see them at the tailor's or perfumer's; and one of these things will be put up for you -- a mannikin for Eusebius!

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 Various

In order to pay his models Haydon was obliged to pawn one of his two lay-figures, since he could not bring himself to part with any more books.

Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century George Paston

There is much mere scaffolding and many lay-figures in drama and novel.

The Principles of Aesthetics Dewitt H. Parker

The living realities of American life ought to come in among the tiresome lay-figures of average English fiction like Steven Lawrence into the London drawing-room: tragedy must resume its grander shape, and no longer turn on the vexed question whether the daughter of this or that matchmaker shall marry the baronet.

Americanism in Literature 1914