joshua-reynolds Quotes About painter

“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.”

Ifs Mind Art Would Be Eye Desire Minutes Genius Succeed Painter Deception Addresses Deceiving

Book:The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Containing His Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary on Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting; to which is Prefixed an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author by Edward Malone

Source: The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Containing His Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary on Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting; to which is Prefixed an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author by Edward Malone

“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.”

People Ambition Tendencies Painter Multitudes Royal Resorts Academy Seducing Exhibitions Mischievous

Book:Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts, delivered at the Royal Academy. With a portrait

Source: Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts, delivered at the Royal Academy. With a portrait

“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.”

Ideas Character Imagination Produce Expectations Raised Finished Drawing Painter Touched Composition Disappoint Supplies Finished Work

Book:The Complete Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: First President of the Royal Academy : with an Original Memoir, and Anecdotes of the Author

Source: The Complete Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: First President of the Royal Academy : with an Original Memoir, and Anecdotes of the Author

“The painter of genius will not 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.”

Heart Moments Attention Design Objects Genius Waste Painter Divides Great Design

Book:Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts, Delivered at the Royal Academy

Source: Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts, Delivered at the Royal Academy

“It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.”

Mind May Materials Painter Vain Endeavour

Book:The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds

Source: The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds

“I have heard painters acknowledge, though in that acknowledgment no degradation of themselves was intended, that they could do better without nature than with her; or as they express themselves, 'that it only put them out.”

Heard Painter Acknowledge Degradation Acknowledgment

Book:Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses

Source: Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses

“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.”

Men May Artist Term Painter Humiliating Imitator

Book:The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds

Source: The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds

“The general ideas which are expressed in sketches, correspond very well to the art often used in poetry... every reader making out the detail according to his own particular imagination... but a painter, when he represents Eve on canvas, is obliged to give a determined form, and his own idea of beauty distinctly expressed.”

Giving Wells Art Ideas Form Used Imagination Particular Reader Details Determined Painter Canvas Obliged

Book:The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Containing His Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary on Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting; to which is Prefixed an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author by Edward Malone

Source: The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Containing His Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary on Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting; to which is Prefixed an Account of the Life and Writings of the Author by Edward Malone

“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.”

Mind Art Moments Natural Poet Sentences Painter Historian Impress Exhibits Deficiency One Sentence

Book:The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds

Source: The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds

“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.”

Firsts May Littles Stills Principles Study Painting Painter Colour Grounded

Book:Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts, delivered at the Royal Academy. With a portrait

Source: Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts, delivered at the Royal Academy. With a portrait

“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.”

Knows Should Mind Art Artist Principles Taste Models Advantage Excellence Painter Assistance Good Art Good Artist

Book:Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts, delivered at the Royal Academy. With a portrait

Source: Discourses on Painting and the Fine Arts, delivered at the Royal Academy. With a portrait