a. [f. BLOT v. + -ESQUE, after grotesque, picturesque, etc.] Of painting: Characterized by blotted touches heavily laid on. fig. of descriptive writing. (It belongs to the ‘phraseology’ of Art-Criticism.)
1856. Staffordshire Sentinel, 26 July, 8/6. ‘A landscape,’ by De Nos, is commendable, though rather too blottesque.
1880. Daily News, 3 Jan., 2/2. The Landscape … is powerful in the unaffected blottesque manner.
1885. Spectator, 24 Jan., 119/1. The fashionable blottesque school, wherewith modern painters smear their way to ‘emolument and oblivion.’
1886. Athenæum, 19 June, 808/3. The manner of relation [of the novel] might not inaptly be described as blottesque.
b. quasi-sb. A roughly executed picture, a daub.
1882. F. G. Fleay, in Jrnl. Educ., May, 146. To produce showy blottesques for framing in drawing-rooms.
Hence Blottesquely adv., with blottesque effect.
1886. Ruskin, in Pall Mall Gaz., 19 Jan., 2/1. Putting my pen lightly through the needless, and blottesquely through the rubbish.
