Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Doe
Imagination
Succeeds
Sometimes
Feeling
Fails
Great
Purpose
Imitation
Something
Feelings
Frequently
Make
Art
Arts
Else
Impression
Nature
Succeed
Ends
Failing

More quotes by Joshua Reynolds

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
The art of seeing nature, or, in other words, the art of using models, is in reality the great object, the point to which all our studies are directed.
Joshua Reynolds
Image
Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.
Joshua Reynolds
Image
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
Image
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
Image
It is but a poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.
Joshua Reynolds
Image
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.
Joshua Reynolds
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Art in its perfection is not ostentatious it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.
Joshua Reynolds
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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.
Joshua Reynolds
Image
There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.
Joshua Reynolds
Image
Certainly, nothing can be more simple than monotony.
Joshua Reynolds
Image
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
Image
Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye.
Joshua Reynolds