Picture, n.
Etymology: [L. pictura, fr. pingere, pictum, to paint: cf. F. peinture. See Paint.]
1. The art of painting; representation by painting. [Obs.] Any well-expressed image . . . either in picture or sculpture. Sir H. Wotton.
2. A representation of anything (as a person, a landscape, a building) upon canvas, paper, or other surface, produced by means of painting, drawing, engraving, photography, etc.; a representation in colors. By extension, a figure; a model. Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects. Bacon. The young king's picture . . . in virgin wax. Howell.
3. An image or resemblance; a representation, either to the eye or to the mind; that which, by its likeness, brings vividly to mind some other thing; as, a child is the picture of his father; the man is the picture of grief. My eyes make pictures when they are shut. Coleridge.
Note: Picture is often used adjectively, or in forming self- explaining compounds; as, picture book or picture-book, picture frame or picture-frame, picture seller or picture-seller, etc. Picture gallery, a gallery, or large apartment, devoted to the exhibition of pictures. -- Picture red, a rod of metal tube fixed to the walls of a room, from which pictures are hung. -- Picture writing. (a) The art of recording events, or of expressing messages, by means of pictures representing the actions or circumstances in question. Tylor. (b) The record or message so represented; as, the picture writing of the American Indians.
1 more senses
Syn. -- Picture, Painting. Every kind of representation by drawing or painting is a picture, whether made with oil colors, water colors, pencil, crayons, or India ink; strictly, a painting is a picture made by means of colored paints, usually applied moist with a brush.
1 other Webster entry under this spelling
Picture, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Pictured; p. pr. & vb. n. Picturing.]
To draw or paint a resemblance of; to delineate; to represent; to form or present an ideal likeness of; to bring before the mind. "I . . . do picture it in my mind." Spenser. I have not seen him so pictured. Shak.
Shades of meaning
Fernald has no entry of its own for picture; he lists it under sketch.
Where he writes about it:
The lines of a sketch are seldom so full and continuous as those of an outline, being, like the shading or color, little more than indications or suggestions according to which a finished picture may be made; the artist's first representation of a sunset, the hues of which change so rapidly, must of necessity be a sketch. — from sketch