Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Done
Impossible
Hand
Taken
Understanding
Hands
Servile
Anything
Executed
Wells
Reluctant
Well
Understood
More quotes by 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
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
Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye.
Joshua Reynolds
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
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
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
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
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.
Joshua Reynolds
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
Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.
Joshua Reynolds
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
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
It is to Titian we must turn our eyes to find excellence with regard to color, and light and shade, in the highest degree. He was both the first and the greatest master of this art. By a few strokes he knew how to mark the general image and character of whatever object he attempted.
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
An eye critically nice can only be formed by observing well-colored pictures with attention.
Joshua Reynolds
Simplicity is an exact mediumbetween too little and too much.
Joshua Reynolds
It is vain for painters... to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.
Joshua Reynolds
Reform is a work of time a national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally changed at once.
Joshua Reynolds
Certainly, nothing can be more simple than monotony.
Joshua Reynolds
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
