The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Knight ... Containing His Discourses, Idlers, A Journey to Flanders and Holland, and His Commentary on Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting, Volume 2T. Cadell, jun. and W. Davies, 1798 - Art |
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Academy acquired admirable advantage altar AMSTER angels ANTWERP appears artist attention attitude beauty BRUSSELS Carlo Maratti certainly character Christ church Claude Lorrain colouring composition considered Correggio countenance criticism defect dignity DISCOURSE Domenichino Domenico Feti DORP drapery drawing drawn dress DUSSEL Dutch effect engraved excellence expression figure finished Gainsborough genius GHENT give grace grandeur habit hand head idea imagination imitation invention Jan Steen Jordaens kind labour landscapes light and shadow likewise look Luca Giordano Magdalen manner Masaccio mass of light master means MECHLIN merit Michael Angelo mind nature never object observed ornament painted painter Paolo Veronese perfect perhaps picture of Rubens Pieta Poetry portrait possessed principles produced racter Raffaelle reason RECOLLETS Rembrandt represented Rubens's Saint Sculpture seen Sergius Paulus shew spectator Steen Student style taste Teniers Terburg thing tion Titian truth ture VANDER Vandyck Virgin Weeninx whole woman
Popular passages
Page 107 - Or ounce, or tiger, hog, or bearded goat, All other parts remaining as they were ; And they, so perfect is their misery, Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, But boast themselves more comely than before, And all their friends and native home forget, To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.
Page 236 - ... he should give the preference, having seen only those two. To distinguish beauty, then, implies the having seen many individuals of that species. If it is asked, how is more skill acquired by the observation of greater numbers? I answer that, in consequence of having seen many, the power is acquired, even without seeking after it, of distinguishing between accidental blemishes and excrescences, which are continually varying the surface of Nature's works, and the invariable general form which...
Page 236 - ... if a man, born blind, was to recover his sight, and the most beautiful woman was brought before him, he could not determine whether she was handsome or not ; nor if the most beautiful and most deformed were produced, could he any better determine to which he should give the preference, having seen only those two. To distinguish beauty, then, implies the having seen many individuals of that species. If it is asked how is more skill acquired by the observation of greater numbers ? I answer that,...
Page 142 - Arts, in their highest province, are not addressed to the gross senses, but to the desires of the mind, to that spark of divinity which we have within, impatient of. being circumscribed and pent up by the world which is about us. Just so much as our Art has of this, just so much of dignity, I had almost said of divinity, it exhibits ; and those of our Artists who possessed this mark of distinction in the highest degree, acquired from thence the glorious appellation of DIvINE.
Page 217 - I feel a self-congratulation in knowing myself capable of such sensations as he intended to excite. I reflect, not without vanity, that these Discourses bear testimony of my admiration of that truly divine man; and I should desire that the last words which I should pronounce in this Academy, and from this place, might be the name of — MICHAEL ANGELO*.
Page 231 - The Italian attends only to the invariable, the great and general ideas which are fixed and inherent in universal Nature ; the Dutch, on the contrary, to literal truth and a minute exactness in the detail, as I may say, of Nature, modified by accident. The attention to these petty peculiarities is the very cause of this naturalness so much admired in the Dutch pictures, which, if we suppose it to be a beauty s certainly of a lower order...
Page 107 - On the contrary, he who recurs to nature, at every recurrence renews his strength. The rules of art he is never likely to forget; they are few and simple ; but nature is refined, subtle, and infinitely various, beyond the power and retention of memory ; it is necessary, therefore, to have continual recourse to her. In this intercourse, there is no end of his improvement ; the longer he lives, the nearer he approaches to the true and perfect idea of art.
Page 116 - This is sometimes the effect of what I mean to caution you against; that is to say, an unfounded distrust of the imagination and feeling, in favour of narrow, partial, confined, argumentative theories; and, of principles that seem to apply to the design in hand; without considering those general impressions on the fancy in which real principles of sound reason, and of much more weight and importance, are involved, and, as it were, lie hid, under the appearance of a sort of vulgar sentiment. Reason,...
Page 232 - There may perhaps be too great an indulgence, as well as too great a restraint of imagination; and if the one produces incoherent monsters, the other produces what is full as bad, lifeless insipidity. An intimate knowledge of the passions, and good sense, but not common sense, must at last determine its limits.
Page 230 - The grand style of Painting requires this minute attention to be carefully avoided, and must be kept as separate from it as the style of Poetry from that of History. Poetical ornaments destroy that air of truth and plainness which ought to...