“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

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Joshua Reynolds 22

English painter, specialising in portraits 1723–1792

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