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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

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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
Attention
Catch
Upon
Painter
Moment
Speaking
Sense
Serve
Moments
Waste
Counteract
Great
Objects
Divide
Heart
Genius
Divides
Design
Smaller

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The excellence of every art, must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose
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Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.
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Gardening as far as Gardening is Art, or entitled to that appellation, is a deviation from nature for if the true taste consists, as many hold, in banishing every appearance of Art, or any traces of the footsteps of man, it would then be no longer a Garden.
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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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A painter must not only be of necessity an imitator of the works of nature... but he must be as necessarily an imitator of the works of other painters. This appears more humiliating, but is equally true and no man can be an artist, whatever he may suppose, upon any other terms.
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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.
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Simplicity is an exact mediumbetween too little and too much.
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Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.
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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.
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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.
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And he who does not know himself does not know others, so it may be said with equal truth, that he who does not know others knows himself but very imperfectly.
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