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Joshua Reynolds Biography

Joshua Reynolds

Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA (16 July 1723 – 23 February 1792) was an English painter, specialising in portraits. John Russell said he was one of the major European painters of the 18th Century. He promoted the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was a founder and first president of the Royal Academy of Arts, and was knighted by George III in 1769.

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Joshua Reynolds Quotes

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.

Imitation, Inspection, Raised, Discover, Value, Happily

In portraits, the grace and, we may add, the likeness consists more in taking the general air than in observing the exact similitude of every feature.

Air, Grace, Portraits, Add, General

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.

Doe, May, Said, Imperfectly, Equal

A passion for his art, and an eager desire to excel, will more than supply an artist with the place of method.

Art, Passion, Desire, Method, Place, Artist

It is vain for painters. . . to endeavour to invent without materials on which the mind may work.

Mind, May, Vain, Materials, Invent, Endeavour

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.

Attained, Color, Copying, Learning, Perfectly, Use

However minutely labored the picture may be in the detail, the whole will have a false and even an unfinished appearance, at whatever distance, or in whatever light it can be shown.

Detail, Distance, Finishing, Labored, Light, Shown

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.

Art, Imagination, Feelings, Make, Imitation, Impression

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.

Art, Compensate, Deficiencies, Mind, Moment, Moments

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

Originality, Produce, Copiers, Nature, Copier

If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.

Ability, Deficiency, Moderate, Talent, Talents

Words should be employed as the means, not the end; language is the instrument, conviction is the work.

Conviction, Instrument, Language, Mean

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.

Imitation, Mind, Obliged, Poorest, Resolve, Resolves

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.

Character, Disappoints, Drawing, Ideas, Supplies, Touched

Style in painting is the same as in writing; a power over materials, whether words or colors, by which conceptions or sentiments are conveyed.

Art, Writing, Color, Materials, Conceptions, Words

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.

Art, Power, Rules, Science, Supposed, Teaching

Nothing can be made of nothing; he who has laid up no material can produce no combination.

Combination, Deeds, Made, Nothing, Produce

What is a well-chosen collection of pictures, but walls hung round with thoughts?

Chosen, Collection, Pictures, Thoughts, Wall, Wells

I have heard painters acknowledge, though in that acknowledgment no degradation of themselves was intended, that they could do better without nature than with her; or as they express themselves, 'that it only put them out.

Degradation, Painter, Heard, Intended, Nature, Though

If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art. . . 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.

Apt, Art, Deception, Eye, Mind

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