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Joshua Reynolds

22 quotes

“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 of nothing.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) first seen 1769 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discourse no. 2, delivered on December 11, 1769; vol. 1, p. 28.
“You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1723–1792) first seen 1770 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discourse no. 3, delivered on December 14, 1770; vol. 1, p. 52.
“Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no doubt, indeed, but 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; nor will he waste a moment upon those smaller objects, which only serve to catch the sense, to divide the attention, and to counteract his great design of speaking to the heart.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It must be remembered that painting is not the mere gratification of sight.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the natural dignity of the subject(of a portrait)is less, the more the ornamental helps are necessary to its embellishments.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) first seen 1771 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discourse no. 4, delivered on December 10, 1771; vol. 1, p. 86.
“Words should be employed as the means, not as the end: language is the instrument, conviction is the work.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A painter must not only be of necessity an imitator of the works of nature...but he must be as necessarily an imitator of the works of other painters: this appears more humiliating, but is equally true; and no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, upon any other terms.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) first seen 1774 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discourse no. 6, delivered on December 10, 1774; vol. 1, p. 150.
“Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellencies, which are out of the reach of the rules of art; a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The mind is but a barren soil; a soil which is soon exhausted, and will produce no crop, or only one, unless it be continually fertilized and enriched with foreign matter.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated. When we know the subject designed by such men, it will never be difficult to guess what kind of work is to be produced.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nature is, and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible; and from which all excellencies must originally flow.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What has pleased, and continues to please, is likely to please again: hence are derived the rules of art, and on this immoveable foundation they must ever stand.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) first seen 1776 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discourse no. 7, delivered on December 10, 1776; vol. 1, p. 223.
“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 (1723–1792) first seen 1778 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discourse no. 8, delivered on December 10, 1778; vol. 1, p. 247.
“You are never to lose sight of nature; the instant you do, you are all abroad, at the mercy of every gust of fashion, without knowing or seeing the point to which you ought to steer.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) first seen 1784 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discourse no. 12, delivered on December 10, 1784; vol. 2, p. 103.
“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.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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, each for the accomplishment of its own particular purpose. These deviations, more especially, will not bear transplantation to another soil.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) first seen 1786 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discourse no. 13, delivered on December 11, 1786; vol. 2, p. 134.
“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 (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What is a well-chosen collection of pictures, but walls hung round with thoughts?”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in The Examiner (1825) p. 633.
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) said by 1792 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Time magazine December 8, 1930