Seven Discourses on Art

Seven Discourses on Art

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Seven Discourses on Art, by Joshua
Reynolds, Edited by Henry Morley
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: Seven Discourses on Art
Author: Joshua Reynolds
Release Date: May 8, 2005 [eBook #2176]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN
DISCOURSES ON ART***

Transcribed from the 1901 Cassell and Company edition by David
Price, email [email protected]. Proofing by David, Dawn Smith,
Uzma, Jane Foster, Juliana Rew, Marie Rhoden and Jo Osment.

SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART by Joshua Reyonds
INTRODUCTION
It is a happy memory that associates the foundation of our Royal
Academy with the delivery of these inaugural discourses by Sir Joshua
Reynolds, on the opening of the schools, and at the first annual
meetings for the distribution of its prizes. They laid down principles of
art from the point of view of a man of genius who had made his power
felt, and with the clear good sense which is the foundation of all work
that looks upward and may hope to live. The truths here expressed
concerning Art may, with slight adjustment of the way of thought, be
applied to Literature or to any exercise of the best powers of mind for

shaping the delights that raise us to the larger sense of life. In his
separation of the utterance of whole truths from insistance upon
accidents of detail, Reynolds was right, because he guarded the
expression of his view with careful definitions of its limits. In the same
way Boileau was right, as a critic of Literature, in demanding
everywhere good sense, in condemning the paste brilliants of a style
then in decay, and fixing attention upon the masterly simplicity of
Roman poets in the time of Augustus. Critics by rule of thumb reduced
the principles clearly defined by Boileau to a dull convention, against
which there came in course of time a strong reaction. In like manner the
teaching of Reynolds was applied by dull men to much vague and
conventional generalisation in the name of dignity. Nevertheless,
Reynolds taught essential truths of Art. The principles laid down by
him will never fail to give strength to the right artist, or true guidance
towards the appreciation of good art, though here and there we may not
wholly assent to some passing application of them, where the
difference may be great between a fashion of thought in his time and in
ours. A righteous enforcement of exact truth in our day has led many
into a readiness to appreciate more really the minute imitation of a satin
dress, or a red herring, than the noblest figure in the best of Raffaelle's
cartoons. Much good should come of the diffusion of this wise little
book.
Joshua Reynolds was born on the 15th of July, 1723, the son of a
clergyman and schoolmaster, at Plympton in Devonshire. His bent for
Art was clear and strong from his childhood. In 1741 at the age of
nineteen, he began study, and studied for two yours in London under
Thomas Hudson, a successful portrait painter. Then he went back to
Devonshire and painted portraits, aided for some time in his education
by attention to the work of William Gandy of Exeter. When twenty-six
years old, in May, 1749, Reynolds was taken away by Captain Keppel
to the Mediterranean, and brought into contact with the works of the
great painters of Italy. He stayed two years in Rome, and in accordance
with the principles afterwards laid down in these lectures, he refused,
when in Rome, commissions for copying, and gave his mind to minute
observation of the art of the great masters by whose works he was
surrounded. He spent two months in Florence, six weeks in Venice, a
few days in Bologna and Parma. "If," he said, "I had never seen any of

the fine works of Correggio, I should never, perhaps, have remarked in
Nature the expression which I find in one of his pieces; or if I had
remarked it, I might have thought it too difficult, or perhaps impossible
to execute."
In 1753 Reynolds came back to England, and stayed three months in
Devonshire before setting up a studio in London, in St. Martin's Lane,
which was then an artists' quarter. His success was rapid. In 1755 he
had one hundred and twenty-five sitters. Samuel Johnson found in him
his most congenial friend. He moved to Newport Street, and he built
himself a studio--where there is now an auction room--at 47, Lincoln's
Inn Fields. There