Joshua Reynolds Quotes

There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.

The real character of a man is found out by his amusements.

Few have been taught to any purpose who have not been their own teachers.

A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.

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.

Art in its perfection is not ostentatious; it lies hid and works its effect, itself unseen.

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.

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.

A mere copier of nature can never produce anything great.

Taste depends upon those finer emotions which make the organization of the soul.

Invention strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come from nothing.

Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.

The young mind is pliable and imitates, but in more advanced states grows rigid and must be warmed and softened before it will receive a deep impression.

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

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.

I can recommend nothing better... than that you endeavor to infuse into your works what you learn from the contemplation of the works of others.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

It is but a poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk.

An eye critically nice can only be formed by observing well-colored pictures with attention.

The value and rank of every art is in proportion to the mental labor employed in it, or the mental pleasure in producing it.

The greatest man is he who forms the taste of a nation; the next greatest is he who corrupts it.

Certainly, nothing can be more simple than monotony.

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.

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.

Perhaps blue, red, and yellow strike the mind more forcibly from there not being any great union between them, as martial music, which is intended to rouse the nobler passions.

All the gestures of children are graceful; the reign of distortion and unnatural attitudes commences with the introduction of the dancing master.

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.

Whatever trips you make, you must still have nature in your eye.

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

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.

There can be no doubt but that he who has the most materials has the greatest means of invention.

The painter of genius will not 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.

Excellence is never granted to man, but as the reward of labour.

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

Nothing can come of nothing; he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations.

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.

Nothing is denied to well-directed labor.

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.

Simplicity is an exact mediumbetween too little and too much.

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.

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.

I wish you to be persuaded that success in your art depends almost entirely on your own industry; but the industry which I principally recommend is not the industry of the hands, but of the mind.

The excellence of every art, must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose

Common observation and a plain understanding is the source of all art.

Less coin, less care.