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

More quotes by Joshua Reynolds

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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
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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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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.
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Though colour may appear at first a part of painting merely mechanical, yet it still has its rules, and those grounded upon that presiding principle which regulates both the great and the little in the study of a painter.
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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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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Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.
Joshua Reynolds
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Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye.
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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Art in its perfection is not ostentatious it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.
Joshua Reynolds
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Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.
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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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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Simplicity is an exact mediumbetween too little and too much.
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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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
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Let me recommend to you not to have too great dependence on your practice or memory, however strong those impressions may have been which are there deposited. They are forever wearing out, and will be at least obliterated, unless they are continually refreshed and repaired.
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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It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.
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