Joshua Reynolds: Quotes about nature

Joshua Reynolds was English painter, specialising in portraits. Explore interesting quotes on nature.
Joshua Reynolds: 44 quotes0 likes

“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

Discourse no. 6, delivered on December 10, 1774; vol. 1, p. 150.
Discourses on Art

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

Discourse no. 3, delivered on December 14, 1770; vol. 1, p. 52.
Discourses on Art

“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

Discourse no. 12, delivered on December 10, 1784; vol. 2, p. 103.
Discourses on Art

“The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, from mere barrenness, to the poorest of all imitations; he will be obliged to imitate himself, and to repeat what he has before often repeated. When we know the subject designed by such men, it will never be difficult to guess what kind of work is to be produced.”

Joshua Reynolds

Discourse no. 6; vol. 1, p. 158.
Discourses on Art

“As the natural dignity of the subject(of a portrait)is less, the more the ornamental helps are necessary to its embellishments.”

Joshua Reynolds

Discourse no. 4, delivered on December 10, 1771; vol. 1, p. 86.
Discourses on Art

“Nature is, and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible; and from which all excellencies must originally flow.”

Joshua Reynolds

Discourse no. 6; vol. 1, p. 162.
Discourses on Art