Joshua Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSAwas an influential eighteenth-century English painter, specialising in portraits. He promoted the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was a founder and first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, and was knighted by George III in 1769...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth16 July 1723
contemplation endeavor i-can
I can recommend nothing better... than that you endeavor to infuse into your works what you learn from the contemplation of the works of others.
color use copying
The great use of copying, if it be at all useful, should seem to be in learning color; yet even coloring will never be perfectly attained by servilely copying the model before you.
art peculiar soil
No art can be grafted with success on another art. For though they all profess the same origin, and to proceed from the same stock, yet each has its own peculiar modes both of imitating nature and of deviating from it... The deviation, more especially, will not bear transplantation to another soil.
art eye deception
If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art... the minute painter would be more apt to succeed. But it is not the eye, it is the mind which the painter of genius desires to address.
art mental-health pleasure
The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labor employed in it, or the mental pleasure in producing it.
forever wish degrees
Our studies will be forever, in a very great degree, under the direction of chance; like travelers, we must take what we can get, and when we can get it - whether it is or is not administered to us in the most commodious manner, in the most proper place, or at the exact minute when we would wish to have it.
art mind answers
The true test of all the arts is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind.
art ideas drawing
Those who are not conversant in works of art are often surprised at the high value set by connoisseurs on drawings which appear careless, and in every respect unfinished; but they are truly valuable... they give the idea of a whole.
mind may vain
It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.
simple light air
The spectator, as he walks the gallery, will stop, or pass along. To give a general air of grandeur at first view, all trifling, or artful play of little lights, or an attention to a variety of tints is to be avoided; a quietness and simplicity must reign over the whole work, to which a breadth of uniform and simple color will very much contribute.
art hands mind
I wish you to be persuaded that success in your art depends almost entirely on your own industry; but the industry which I principally recommend is not the industry of the hands, but of the mind.
art mind excellence
An artist who brings to his work a mind tolerably furnished with the general principles of art, and a taste formed upon the works of good artists – in short, who knows in what excellence consists - will, with the assistance of models... be an overmatch for the greatest painter that ever lived who should be debarred such advantages.
men vanity gone
Those who, either from their own engagements and hurry of business, or from indolence, or from conceit and vanity, have neglected looking out of themselves, as far as my experience and observation reach, have from that time not only ceased to advance, and improve in their performances, but have gone backward. They may be compared to men who have lived upon their principal, till they are reduced to beggary, and left without resources.
may taste reform
Reform is a work of time; a national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally changed at once.