Quote #18
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.
More from Joshua Reynolds
- No Art can be grafted with success on another art. For though they all profess the same origin, and to proceed from the same stock, yet eac…
- 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 ar…
- 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 se…
- Poetry operates by raising our curiosity, engaging the mind by degrees to take an interest in the event, keeping that event suspended, and …
- What has pleased, and continues to please, is likely to please again: hence are derived the rules of art, and on this immoveable foundation…
- Nature is, and must be the fountain which alone is inexhaustible; and from which all excellencies must originally flow.
- The greatest natural genius cannot subsist on its own stock: he who resolves never to ransack any mind but his own, will be soon reduced, f…
- 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 a…