Joshua Reynolds Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
More Joshua Reynolds quote about:
- Ambition,
- Art,
- Character,
- Desire,
- Excellence,
- Eyes,
- Genius,
- Giving,
- Imagination,
- Imitation,
- Labor,
- Memories,
- Observation,
- Painting,
- Passion,
- Purpose,
- Simplicity,
- Students,
- Study,
-
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“The real character of a man is found out by his amusements....”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“Words should be employed as the means, not the end; language is the instrument, conviction is the work.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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...”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“What is a well-chosen collection of pictures, but walls hung round with thoughts?”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“From a slight, undetermined drawing, where the ideas of the composition and character are just touched upon, the imagination supplies more than the painter himself, probably, could produce. And we accordingly often find that the finished work disappoints the expectation that was raised from the sketch...”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“While I recommend studying the art from artists, Nature is and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible, and from which all excellences must originally flow.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“What has pleased and continues to please, is likely to please again; hence are derived the rules of art, and on this immovable foundation they must ever stand.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“I do not see in what manner practice alone can be sufficient for the production of correct, excellent, and finished pictures. Works deserving this character never were produced, nor ever will arise, from memory alone...”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“In the practice of art... it is necessary to keep a watchful and jealous eye over ourselves; idleness, assuming the specious disguise of industry... may be employed to evade and shuffle off real labor - the real labor of thinking.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye...”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds -
“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.”
-- Joshua Reynolds
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