“You must have no dependence on your own genius. If you have great talents, industry will improve them; if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.”
“A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts.”
Joshua Reynolds
“A mere copier of nature can never produce any thing great, can never raise and enlarge the conceptions, or warm the heart of the spectator.”
Joshua Reynolds
“Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius.”
Joshua Reynolds
“If deceiving the eye were the only business of the art, there is no doubt, indeed, but the minute painter would be more apt to succeed; but it is not the eye, it is the mind, which the painter of geni...”
Joshua Reynolds
“A painter must compensate the natural deficiencies of his art. He has but one sentence to utter, but one moment to exhibit. He cannot, like the poet or historian, expatiate.”
Joshua Reynolds