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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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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
Warm
Copiers
Mere
Enlarge
Produce
Conceptions
Nature
Spectator
Great
Spectators
Heart
Conception
Thing
Raise
Never
Raises

More quotes by Joshua Reynolds

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Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.
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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.
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.
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Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and surprising at last with an unexpected catastrophe.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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
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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.
Joshua Reynolds
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Reform is a work of time a national taste, however wrong it may be, cannot be totally changed at once.
Joshua Reynolds
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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
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Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.
Joshua Reynolds
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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
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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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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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There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.
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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Art in its perfection is not ostentatious it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.
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