The Art of Painting of Charles Alphonse Du Fresnoy

Front Cover
A. Ward, and sold by J. Dodsley, Pall-Mall, T. Cadell, in the Strand, R. Faulder, New Bond-street, London, and J. Todd, York, 1783 - Art - 213 pages
 

Selected pages

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page 188 - Helen thy Bridgewater vie, And these be sung till Granville's Myra die : Alas ! how little from the grave we claim ! Thou but preserv'st a face, and I a name.
Page 172 - To make a sketch, or a more perfect model of a picture," is in the language of poets, to draw up the scenery of a play : and the reason is the same for both ; to guide the undertaking, and to preserve the remembrance of such things whose natures are difficult to retain.
Page 187 - Bid her be all that cheers or softens life, The tender sister, daughter, friend, and wife; Bid her be all that makes mankind adore, Then view this marble, and be vain no more!
Page 185 - And each from each contract new strength and light. How oft in pleasing tasks we wear the day, While summer suns roll unperceiv'd away ! How oft...
Page 170 - Tragedy, or in an Epic Poem, the hero of the piece must be advanced foremost to the view of the reader or spectator : he must outshine the rest of all the characters ; he must appear the prince of them, like the sun in the Copernican System, encompassed with the less noble planets. Because the hero is the centre of the main action, all the lines from the circumference tend to him alone ; he is the chief object of pity, in the drama, and of admiration in the Epic Poem.
Page 164 - But it follows not that what pleases most in either kind is therefore good, but what ought to please. Our depraved appetites, and ignorance of the arts...
Page 162 - French critics, by studying the precepts of Aristotle and Horace, and having the example of the Grecian poets before their eyes...
Page 172 - ... too large to be supplied by a company of actors. It is true, I should not be sorry to see a chorus on a theatre, more than as large and as deep again as ours, built and adorned at a king's charges : and on that condition and another, which is, that my hands were not bound behind me, as now they are, I should not despair of making such a Tragedy, as might be both instructive and delightful, according to the manner of the Grecians. " To make a sketch, or a more perfect model of a picture...
Page 79 - From the genitories to the upper part of the knee, two faces. The knee contains half a face. From the lower part of the knee to the ankle, two faces. From the ankle to the sole of the foot, half a face. A man, when his arms are stretched out, is, from the longest finger of his right hand, to the longest of his left, as broad as he is long.
Page 89 - ... in their minds. In Painting it is far better to have a model even to depart from, than to have nothing fixed and certain to determine the idea. When there is a model, there is something to proceed on, something to be corrected; so that even supposing no part is adopted, the model has still been not without use.

Bibliographic information