Joshua Reynolds - Art Quotes

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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
A passion for his art, and an eager desire to excel, will more than supply an artist with the place of method.

Joshua Reynolds
Variety and intricacy is a beauty and excellence in every other of the arts which address the imagination; and why not in Architecture?

Joshua Reynolds
The excellence of every art, must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose

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
It is to Titian we must turn our eyes to find excellence with regard to color, and light and shade, in the highest degree. He was both the first and the greatest master of this art. By a few strokes he knew how to mark the general image and character of whatever object he attempted...

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

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
The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labour employed in it, or the mental pleasure produced by 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 immoveable foundation they must ever stand.

Joshua Reynolds
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
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
Every art, like our own, has in its composition fluctuating as well as fixed principles. It is an attentive inquiry into their difference that will enable us to determine how far we are influenced by custom and habit, and what is fixed in the nature of things.

Joshua Reynolds
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
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
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