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He who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated.

Joshua Reynolds

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Joshua Reynolds
Age: 69 †
Born: 1723
Born: January 1
Died: 1792
Died: January 1
Painter
Plympton St Mary
Sir Joshua Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynold
Sir Joshua Raynolds
Sir Reynolds
Sir Joshua Reynolds RA
Joshua Reynolds Sir
J.
Sir Reynolds
Joshua
Sir Reynolds
Joshua Reynolds (Sir)
sir j. reynolds
S. J. Reynolds
Sir J. Reynods
j. reynolds
Sir J. Reynold
Sir J. Reynoulds
S.J. Reynolds
Sir Jos Reynolds
[Sir Joshua Reynolds]
Mr. Reynolds
Often
Reduced
Mind
Obliged
Ransack
Never
Imitation
Barrenness
Repeat
Imitations
Repeats
Resolves
Resolve
Imitate
Mere
Poorest
Soon
Repeated

More quotes by Joshua Reynolds

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The great use of copying, if it be at all useful, should seem to be in learning color yet even coloring will never be perfectly attained by servilely copying the model before you.
Joshua Reynolds
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It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.
Joshua Reynolds
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Reform is a work of time a national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally changed at once.
Joshua Reynolds
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By close inspection... you will discover the manner of handling the artifices of contrast, glazing, and other expedients, by which good colorists have raised the value of their tints, and by which nature has been so happily imitated.
Joshua Reynolds
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It is impossible that anything will be well understood or well done that is taken into a reluctant understanding, and executed with a servile hand.
Joshua Reynolds
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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.
Joshua Reynolds
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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.
Joshua Reynolds
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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
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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.
Joshua Reynolds
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Certainly, nothing can be more simple than monotony.
Joshua Reynolds
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While I recommend studying the art from artists, Nature is and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible, and from which all excellences must originally flow.
Joshua Reynolds
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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.
Joshua Reynolds
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An eye critically nice can only be formed by observing well-colored pictures with attention.
Joshua Reynolds
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Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.
Joshua Reynolds
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Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye.
Joshua Reynolds
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There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.
Joshua Reynolds
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You are never to lose sight of nature the instant you do, you are all abroad, at the mercy of every gust of fashion, without knowing or seeing the point to which you ought to steer.
Joshua Reynolds
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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.
Joshua Reynolds
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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.
Joshua Reynolds
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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.
Joshua Reynolds