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
memories creativity littles
Invention strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come from nothing.
talent ability deficiency
If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.
mean language conviction
Words should be employed as the means, not the end; language is the instrument, conviction is the work.
life art rooms
A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.
teaching discovery leaving
By leaving a student to himself he may... be led to undertake matters above his strength, but the trial will at least have this advantage: it will discover to himself his own deficiencies and this discovery alone is a very considerable acquisition.
greatness men taste
The greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation; the next greatest is he who corrupts it.
ambition people exhibitions
Our Exhibitions [The Royal Academy] have... a mischievous tendency, by seducing the Painter to an ambition of pleasing indiscriminately the mixed multitude of people who resort to them.
genius taste would-be
Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.
originality produce copiers
A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.
simple simplicity monotony
Certainly, nothing can be more simple than monotony.
real character men
The real character of a man is found out by his amusements....
education teacher taught
Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.
travel eye stills
Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye...
art imagination feelings
The great end of all arts is to make an impression on the imagination and the feeling. The imitation of nature frequently does this. Sometimes it fails and something else succeeds.