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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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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
Changed
Wrong
Cannot
May
Reform
Work
Totally
Time
National
However
Taste

More quotes by Joshua Reynolds

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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.
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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An eye critically nice can only be formed by observing well-colored pictures with attention.
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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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
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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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The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.
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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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
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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
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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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Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.
Joshua Reynolds
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Our studies will be forever, in a very great degree, under the direction of chance like travelers, we must take what we can get, and when we can get it - whether it is or is not administered to us in the most commodious manner, in the most proper place, or at the exact minute when we would wish to have it.
Joshua Reynolds
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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.
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 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
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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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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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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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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