rhyparographyn.

1678 E. Phillips New World of Words (new ed.) List Barbarous Words Ryparography.

1842 W. Smith Dict. Greek & Rom. Antiq. 694/1 Rhyparography, pornography, and all the lower classes of art.

1850 J. Leitch tr. K. O. Müller Ancient Art (new ed.) §163 At this time also rhyparography (so-called still life) probably made its appearance.

1896 G. Saintsbury Hist. 19th Cent. Lit. i. 22 The Lousiad (a perfect triumph of cleverness expended on what the Greeks called rhyparography).

1927 Amer. Mercury May p. xlviii Mr. Craven cannot quite distinguish between painting and art, rhyparography and art, realism and art.

1951 M. L. Wolf Dict. Arts 586 Rhyparography, (1) In literature, esp. Renaissance, the presentation of sordid or low individuals or subjects. (2) In art generally, esp. painting, the depiction of foul or revolting objects or scenes; also, the painting of genre or still life pictures.

2007 R. Dowling Slumming in New York (2009) 68 Peck accuses Crane of rhyparography—creating distasteful imagery for its own sake.

1815 Monthly Rev. Aug. 356 Pauson and Pyreicus also are enumerated among the rhyparographic painters, whose freaks some of the Greek republics deemed it right to restrain by law.

1886 G. Saintsbury in Academy 3 Apr. 234/1 She takes a sort of Naturalist delight in describing the most sordid..features of the least attractive kind of English middle-class life, and..never misses a rhyparographic touch when she can introduce one.

1991 J. R. Clark Modern Satiric Grotesque 117 What society normally considers low and sordid, as rhyparographic, are more frequently excretory than sexual.

1891 F. W. Farrar Darkness & Dawn I. xv. 125 Frescoes painted by the most famous rhyparographists.

1896 A. C. Hillier tr. R. Muther Hist. Mod. Painting II. iii. xxvii. 511 These naturalists in the seventeenth century were treated by the academical artists as rhyparographists.

1985 I. Stone Depths of Glory i. §12. 45 Eugène Loudun said: ‘God save us from dwelling upon those painters who were known in Greece as rhyparographists, painters of filth.’