Pic·ture n.
 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.
 Animated picture, a moving picture.
 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.
 Syn: -- Picture, Painting.
 Usage: 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.