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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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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
Alone
Recommend
Artist
Originally
Fountain
Art
Studying
Nature
Excellence
Must
Artists
Flow
Excellences
Study
Inexhaustible

More quotes by Joshua Reynolds

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A passion for his art, and an eager desire to excel, will more than supply an artist with the place of method.
Joshua Reynolds
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Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.
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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It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.
Joshua Reynolds
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Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are put of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.
Joshua Reynolds
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It is but a poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.
Joshua Reynolds
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Our studies will be forever, in a very great degree, under the direction of chance like travelers, we must take what we can get, and when we can get it - whether it is or is not administered to us in the most commodious manner, in the most proper place, or at the exact minute when we would wish to have it.
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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The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.
Joshua Reynolds
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Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.
Joshua Reynolds
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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
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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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Excellence is never granted to man but as the reward of labor. It argues no small strength of mind to persevere in habits of industry without the pleasure of perceiving those advances, which, like the hand of a clock, whilst they make hourly approaches to their point, yet proceed so slowly as to escape observation.
Joshua Reynolds
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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
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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.
Joshua Reynolds
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The great end of all arts is to make an impression on the imagination and the feeling. The imitation of nature frequently does this. Sometimes it fails and something else succeeds.
Joshua Reynolds
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Art in its perfection is not ostentatious it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.
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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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