Joshua Reynolds Short Quotes

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Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labour.

Joshua Reynolds
Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye...

Joshua Reynolds
Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

Joshua Reynolds
It must be remembered that painting is not the mere gratification of sight.

Joshua Reynolds
What is a well-chosen collection of pictures, but walls hung round with thoughts?

Joshua Reynolds
Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.

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

Joshua Reynolds
Distinction is what we all seek after, and the world does set a value on them [titles].

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

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

Joshua Reynolds
There can be no doubt but that he who has the most materials has the greatest means of invention...

Joshua Reynolds
Words should be employed as the means, not as the end: language is the instrument, conviction is the work.

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
Nature is, and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible; and from which all excellencies must originally flow.

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
As the natural dignity of the subject (of a portrait) is less, the more the ornamental helps are necessary to its embellishments.

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
I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place, might be the name of—Michael Angelo.

Joshua Reynolds
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
Style in painting is the same as in writing; a power over materials, whether words or colors, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed.

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
In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature.

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
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
It is the very same taste which relishes a demonstration in geometry, that is pleased with the resemblance of a picture to an original, and touched with the harmony of music.

Joshua Reynolds
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
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
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 from nothing.

Joshua Reynolds
The distinct blue, red, and yellow colors... though they have not the kind of harmony which is produced by a variety of broken and transparent colors, have the effect of grandeur.

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