The Life and Discourses of Sir Joshua ReynoldsSawyer, 1853 - 286 pages |
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acquired admiration Albert Durer ancient appear artist attention beauty Burke Carlo Maratti character Claude Lorrain coloring composition considered copy Correggio defects dignity DISCOURSE distinguished drapery drawing dress effect elegance eminent employed endeavor equal excellence exhibition expression fame figure finished Gainsborough genius give grace grandeur Guercino habit idea imagination imitation invention Johnson justly kind knowledge labor light and shadow living manner Masaccio masters means merit method Michael Angelo mind modern nature never Northcote object observed opinion ornaments painter painting passions Paul Veronese peculiar Pellegrino Tibaldi pencil perfect perhaps picture Pietro Perugino poet poetical poetry portrait possessed Poussin practice principles produced Raffaelle Raphael reason Rembrandt Reynolds Rome Royal Academy Rubens rules Sculptors seems sense simplicity Sir Joshua skill Students style suppose taste thing thought tion Titian true truth ture Venetian Venetian school vulgar whole wish
Popular passages
Page 42 - The only dedication I ever made was to my brother, because I loved him better than most other men. He is since dead. Permit me to inscribe this Poem to you.
Page 43 - Here Reynolds is laid, and, to tell you my mind, He has not left a better or wiser behind: His pencil was striking, resistless, and grand; His manners were gentle, complying, and bland; Still born to improve us in every part, His pencil our faces, his manners our heart...
Page 39 - There is no excellent Beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. A man cannot tell, whether Apelles or Albert Durer were the more trifler; whereof the one would make a personage by geometrical proportions, the other by taking the best parts out of divers faces to make one Excellent.
Page 93 - 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.
Page 33 - I will now add, that Nature herself is not to be too closely copied. There are excellencies in the art of painting beyond what is commonly called the imitation of Nature ; and these excellencies I wish to point out.
Page 34 - ... of antiquity, are continually enforcing this position, that all the arts receive their perfection from an ideal beauty, superior to what is to be found in individual nature. They are ever referring to the practice of the painters and sculptors of their times, particularly Phidias (the favourite artist of antiquity), to illustrate their assertions. As if they could not sufficiently express their admiration of his genius by what they knew, they have recourse to poetical enthusiasm. They call it...
Page 280 - It must be remembered, that this great style itself is artificial in the highest degree ; it presupposes in the spectator a cultivated and prepared artificial state of mind. It is an absurdity, therefore, to suppose that we are born with this taste, though we are with the seeds of it, which, by the heat and kindly influence of his genius, may be ripened in us.
Page 114 - ... entertain such sentiments as these, we generally rest contented with mere words, or at best entertain notions not only groundless but pernicious.
Page 229 - ... it ; and does not wait for the slow progress of deduction, but goes at once, by what appears a kind of intuition, to the conclusion. A man endowed with this faculty feels and acknowledges the truth, though it is not always in his power, perhaps, to give a reason for it ; because he cannot recollect and bring before him all the materials that gave birth to his opinion ; for very many and very intricate considerations may unite to form the principle, even of small and minute parts, involved in,...
Page 38 - ... deficiencies, excrescences, and deformities of things, from their general figures, he makes out an abstract idea of their forms, more perfect than any one original : and, what may seem a paradox, he learns to design naturally, by drawing his figures unlike to any one object. This idea of the perfect state of nature, which the artist calls the ideal beauty, is the great leading principle by which works of genius are conducted.