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Sir Joshua Reynolds's Discourses On ^ 1/ ONTARIO COLLEO! Of ART LIBRARY 100 McCAUL STR'TET TORONTO, ONTAKIO M5T IWl ^ tf' Sir loshua Keviuilds, F. R. A. Sir Joshua Reynolds's DISCOURSES EDITED IVITH NOTES AND AN HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION BV EDWARD GILPIN JOHNSON litf) EUustrations \iTAklO COllEGV. or- A LIBRARY ' ^ 100 McCAUL STREET frORONTO, ONTARIO MoJ m CHICAGO A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY 1S91 Copyright, By a. C. McClurg and Co. A. D. iSqi. TABLE OF CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. DISCOURSE I. The Advantages Proceeding from the Institution of a Royal Academy. — Hints offered to the Considera- tion OF the Professors and Visitors. — That an Im- plicit Obedience to the Rules of Art be exacted from the Young Si'udents — That a Premature Dis- position to a Masterly Dexterity be repressed. — That Diligence be constantly recommended, and (that it may be effectual) directed to its proper OBjEcr 53 DISCOURSE 11. The Course and Order of Study. — The Different Stages of Art. — Much Copying discountenanced. — The Artist at all Times and in all Places should be EMPLOYED in LAVING UP MATERIALS FOR THE EXERCISE OF His Art 63 DISCOURSE III. The great leading Principles of the Grand Style. — Of Beauty. — The genuine habits of Nature to be Dis- tinguished FROM those of Fashion 8i TABLE OF CONTENTS. DISCOURSE IV. General Ideas, the presiding Principle which Regulates EVERY PART OF ArT; INVENTION, EXPRESSION, COLORING, AND Drapery. — Two distinct Styles of History-paint- ING : THE Grand, and the Ornamental. — The Schools IN which Each is to be Found. — The Composite Style. — The Style formed on local Customs and Habits, or a partial View of Nature 99 DISCOURSE V. Circumspection required in Endeavoring to Unite con- trary Excellences. — The Expression of a mixed Pas- sion NOT TO BE Attempted. — Examples of Those who Excelled in the great Style. — Raphael, Michael An- gelo, those two extraordinary men compared with Each Other.—The Characteristical Style.— Salvator Rosa mentioned as an Example of that Style ; and Op- posed TO Carlo Maratti. — Sketch of the Characters of Poussin and Rubens. — These two Painters entirely Dissimilar, but Consistent with Themselves. — This Consistency required in All Parts of the Art. 123 DISCOURSE VI. Imitation. — Genius begins where Rules end. — Inven- tion : acquired by being Conversant with the Inven- tions of Others. — The true Method of Imitating. — Borrowing, how far Allowable. — Something to be Gathered from every School 143 DISCOURSE VII. The Reality of a Standard of Taste, as well as of Cor- poral Beauty. — Besides this Immediate Truth, there are Secondary Truths, which are Variable ; Both requiring the Attention of the Artist, in Proportion TO Their Stability or Their Influence 171 TABLE OF CONTENTS. DISCOURSE VIII. Thk Principles of Art, whether Poetry or Painting, HAVE their Foundation in the Mind; .such as Nov- elty, Variety, and Contrast; these in their Excess become Defects. — Simplicity, its excess Disagreea- ble. — Rules not to be always observed in their Lite- ral Sense: sufficient to PRESEi^VE the Spirit of the Law. — Observations on the Prize Pictures 207 DISCOURSE IX. On the Removal of the Royal Academy to Somerset Place. — the Advantages to Society from Cultivat- ing Intellectual Pleasure 237 DISCOURSE X. Sculpture: — has but one Style. — Its Objects, Form, and Character. — ineffectual Attempts of the Modern Sculptors to Improve the Art. — III Effects of Modern Dress in Sculpture 241 DISCOURSE XI. Genius, — consists principally in the Comprehension of a Whole ; in taking General Ideas ONLY 259 DISCOURSE XII. Particular methods of Study of little Consequence.— LITTLE of the ArT CAN BE TaUGHT. — LoVE OF METHOD OFTEN A Love of Idleness. — Pittori Improvvisatori apt TO be Careless and Incorrect; seldom Original and Spriking. — this proceeds from their not Studying the Works of other Masters 279 DISCOURSE XIII. Art not merely Imitation, but under the Direction of THE Imagination. — In what manner Poetry, Painting, Acting, Gardening, and Architecture, depart from Nature 305 VI TABLE OF CONTENTS. DISCOURSE XIV. Character of Gainsborough. — His Excellences and Defects 327 DISCOURSE XV. The President takes leave of the Academy. — A Review OF THE Discourses. — The Study of the Works of Michael Angelo recommended 349 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Sir Joshua Reynolds, P. R. A Frontispiece Miss Nelly O'Brien To face page 13 Schoolboys (John Bellenden and Henry Gawler) 17 Sir W. Hamilton 33 Lady Charles Spencer 39 Mrs. SiDDONs as the Tragic Muse ...... 53 The Age of Innocence 63 Miss Kitty Fisher as Cleopatra 81 Lady Sophia St. Asaph and Child 99 Mrs. Merrick 123 Mrs. Lucy H.a.rdinge 143 Lady Louisa Manners (Countess Dvsart) . 171 Mrs. Robinson 207 Sir Joseph Banks 237 St. Agnes 241 Mrs. Ann Hope 259 Master Jacob Bouverie (afterwards Earl of Radnor, 1776) 279 Mrs. Billington as St. Cecilia 305 Miss Nelly O'Brien 327 John, Earl of Upper Ossory 349 TO THE KING. The regular progress of cultivated life is from necessaries to accommodations, from accommodations to ornaments. By your illustrious predecessors were established Marts for manu- factures, and Colleges for science; but for the arts of elegance, those arts by which manufactures are embellished, and science is refined, to found an Academy was reserved for your Majesty. Had such patronage been without effect, there had been reason to believe that Nature had, by some insurmountable impediment, obstructed our proficiency; but the annual im- provement of the Exhibitions which Your Majesty has been pleased to encourage shows that only encouragement had been wanting. To give advice to those who are contending for royal liber- ality has been for some years the duty of my station in the Academy; and these Discourses hope for Your Majesty's acceptance, as well-intended endeavors to incite that emulation which your notice has kindled, and direct those studies which your bounty has rewarded. May it please Your Majesty, Your Majesty's Most dutiful servant And most faithful subject, [1778] JOSHUA REYNOLDS TO THE MEMBERS Ol'- THE ROYAL ACADEMY. Gentlemen, That you have ordered the publication of this discourse is not only very flattering to me, as it implies your approbation of the method of study which I have recommended, but likewise, as this method receives from that act such an additional weight and authority as demands from the students that deference and respect which can be due only to the united sense of so considerable a Body of Artists. I am, With the greatest esteem and respect, Gentlemen, Your most humble, And obedient Servant, JOSHUA REYNOLDS. M/s-s Nellv (rBiieii. ; INTRODUCTION. ALTHOUGH Sir Joshua Reynolds contributed more perhaps than any other one man to the elevation and reputation of the art of his country, the title of " founder of the English school," sometimes bestowed upon him, im- plies a distinction to which he is not justly entitled. The expression is in itself a loose one ; doubly so as applied to Reynolds, who, though he left successors — more or less attenuated — in portraiture, as well as in his less frequent flights into ideal and historical painting, formed no school and essentially so, because there is not, strictly speaking, and in the sense in which we speak of the several Italian schools or of the Dutch or Flemish schools, an English school of painting at all. The term "school " as thus used has a special and technical sense, embracing the common methods of technique, the special traditions and processes tending to the production of one general type of picture or fixed national ideal, to which painters of the same age and country have been constrained to submit ; and the rise of a school of painting implies a general diffusion of artistic taste, and a close system of training and apprenticeship such as have never prevailed in England. The English painter, after leaving the academy schools, is generally free to follow his personal bent ; and no art owes more to indi- vidual initiative and less to the cumulative force of consist- ent principle and tradition than English art. To say, then, 14 IXTRODUCTION. that this or that painter is of the English school means lit- tle more than that he is an English painter, — not that he is one who in his work carries out certain national conventions and processes, for these have not as yet been developed in England. Still, while England has not, in the confined sense, evolved a school of painting, while her art is, consequently, richly varied, " full of surprises and unexpected originality," " and not, indeed, free from that " mania of eccentricity remarked by the foreigner, its productions, stamped through- out with the genius of the race, form a connected and con- siderable whole. Lacking in the academic uniformity which springs from a consistent aim and a fixed ideal, English painting, like English literature, presents through all its contrasts of form a marked national character. " From whatever side one regards it," observes a recent French critic,^ " the English school always discloses some " idiosyncracy peculiar to the ordinary British mind ; and it is hardly necessary to add that the " ordinary British " mind has not an aesthetic bent ; that it must be appealed " to on other, and, as it holds, higher and more " serious grounds than that innate feeling for harmony and sensuous beauty characteristic of the Latin races. " The prosaic British mind," said Emerson, " seeks the prose in nature." Purely decorative and sensuous forms of art, the sponta- neous outgrowth of the southern temperament, are exotics in England ; and no system of hot- house forcing and observance of patent method and recipe have produced there anything but the feeblest reflection of the theological and " historical " painting of the Latin schools. Seeking for the prevailing tendency of English painters as a body, one may say that it is to impute to their art the special office of language, — to make the picture unduly .n 1 M.
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