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
Joshua Reynolds quotes about
american-inventor expedient man
There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.
gathered images strictly
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.
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.
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.
talent ability deficiency
If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.
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.
simple light air
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.
travel eye stills
Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye...
wells labor denied
Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.
learning mind matter
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.
dance attitude children
All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master.
mind persuasion young
The young mind is pliable and imitates, but in more advanced states grows rigid and must be warmed and softened before it will receive a deep impression.
passion blue yellow
Perhaps blue, red, and yellow strike the mind more forcibly from there not being any great union between them, as martial music, which is intended to rouse the nobler passions...