Joshua Reynolds quote: A passion for his art, and an eager

“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 Reality Study Seeing Objects Models

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

“Martial music has sudden and strongly marked transitions from one note to another which that style of music requires; while in that which is intended to move the softer passions, the notes imperceptibly melt into one another.”

Moving Passion Style Notes Transition

Book:The discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Illustr. by explanatory notes & plates by John Burnet

Source: The discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds: Illustr. by explanatory notes & plates by John Burnet

“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

“An eye critically nice can only be formed by observing well-colored pictures with attention.”

Wells Eye Attention Nice Observation Observing

Book:The Life and Writings of Sir Joshua Reynolds: First President of the Royal Academy

Source: The Life and Writings of Sir Joshua Reynolds: First President of the Royal Academy

“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

“Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.”

Art Lying Effects Perfection Unseen Ostentatious

Author: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.”

Art Pleasure Please Foundation

Book:A Selection from the Discourses Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy

Source: A Selection from the Discourses Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy

“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.”