Joshua Reynolds: Quotes about art

Joshua Reynolds was English painter, specialising in portraits. Explore interesting quotes on art.
Joshua Reynolds: 44   quotes 0   likes

“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

Discourse no. 12; vol. 2, p. 104.
Discourses on Art

Art , Nature , Reality , Study

“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. The painter's art is more confined, and has nothing that corresponds with, or perhaps is equivalent to, this power and advantage of leading the mind on, till attention is totally engaged. What is done by Painting, must be done at one blow; curiosity has received at once all the satisfaction it can ever have.”

Joshua Reynolds

Discourse no. 8, delivered on December 10, 1778; vol. 1, p. 247.
Discourses on Art

Art , Painting

“Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellencies, which are out of the reach of the rules of art; a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.”

Joshua Reynolds

Discourse no. 6
Discourses on Art

Art

“What has pleased, and continues to please, is likely to please again: hence are derived the rules of art, and on this immoveable foundation they must ever stand.”

Joshua Reynolds

Discourse no. 7, delivered on December 10, 1776; vol. 1, p. 223.
Discourses on Art

Art

“The true test of all the arts, is not solely whether the production is a true copy of nature, but whether it answers the end of art, which is to produce a pleasing effect upon the mind.”

Joshua Reynolds

Discourse no. 13; vol. 2, p. 136.
Discourses on Art

Art , Nature

“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.”

Joshua Reynolds

Discourses on Art

Art , Nature

“No Art can be grafted with success on another art. For though they all profess the same origin, and to proceed from the same stock, yet each has its own peculiar modes both of imitating nature, and of deviating from it, each for the accomplishment of its own particular purpose. These deviations, more especially, will not bear transplantation to another soil.”

Joshua Reynolds

Discourse no. 13, delivered on December 11, 1786; vol. 2, p. 134.
Discourses on Art

Art , Nature , Success

“If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed; but it is not the eye, it is the mind, which the painter of genius desires to address; nor will he 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

Discourse no. 3; vol. 1, pp. 70-71.
Discourses on Art

Art , Business , Sense , Heart