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
heart produce copiers
A mere copier of nature can never produce any thing great, can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator.
art blow curiosity
Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe. The painter's art is more confined, and has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally engaged. What is done by Painting, must be done at one blow; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have.
air grace add
In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature.
wall wells chosen
What is a well-chosen collection of pictures, but walls hung round with thoughts?
color two simplicity
Grandeur of effect is produced by two different ways which seem entirely opposed to each other. One is by reducing the colors to little more than chiaroscuro... and the other, by making the colors very distinct and forcible... but still, the presiding principle of both those manners is simplicity.
organization soul taste
Taste depends upon those finer emotions which make the organization of the soul.
may littles firsts
Though colour may appear at first a part of painting merely mechanical, yet it still has its rules, and those grounded upon that presiding principle which regulates both the great and the little in the study of a painter.
mean doubt invention
There can be no doubt but that he who has the most materials has the greatest means of invention...
strong memories practice
Let me recommend to you not to have too great dependence on your practice or memory, however strong those impressions may have been which are there deposited. They are forever wearing out, and will be at least obliterated, unless they are continually refreshed and repaired.
art reality study
The art of seeing nature, or, in other words, the art of using models, is in reality the great object, the point to which all our studies are directed.
art mind moments
A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit. He cannot, like the poet or historian, expatiate, and impress the mind...
art lying perfection
Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.
wells labor denied
Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.
art understanding common
Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.