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, Band 2

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T. Cadell, Jr. and W. Davies, 1801

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Seite 226 - I was led into the subject of this letter by endeavouring to fix the original cause of this conduct of the Italian masters. If it can be proved that by this choice they selected the most beautiful part of the creation, it will...
Seite 119 - It is the lowest style only of arts, whether of Painting, Poetry, or Musick, that may be said, in the vulgar sense, to be naturally pleasing. The higher efforts of those arts we know by experience, do not affect minds wholly uncultivated. This refined taste is the consequence of education and habit; we are born only with a capacity of entertaining this refinement, as we are born with a disposition to receive and obey all the rules and regulations of society; and so far it may be said to be natural...
Seite 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, is certainly...
Seite 227 - ... 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, is certainly of a lower order, which ought to give place to a beauty of a superior kind, since one cannot be obtained but by departing from the other.
Seite 171 - The likeness of a portrait, as I have formerly observed, consists more in preserving the general effect of the countenance, than in the most minute finishing of the features, or •any of the particular parts. Now Gainsborough's portraits were often little more, in regard to finishing, or determining the form of the features, than what generally attends a dead colour; but as he was always attentive to the general effect, or whole together, I have often imagined that this unfinished manner contributed...
Seite 292 - Rubens ; on the contrary, his mezzotints are often too grey. The blue drapery, about the middle of the figure at the bottom of the Cross, and the grey colour of some armour, are nearly all the cold colours in the picture ; which are certainly not enough to qualify so large a space of warm colours. The principal mass of light is on the Christ's body; but in order to enlarge it, and improve its shape, a strong light comes on the shoulder of the figure with a bald head : the form of this shoulder is...
Seite 418 - Correggio, or any of the great colourists. The effect of his pictures may be not improperly compared to clusters of flowers; all his colours appear as clear and as beautiful : at the same time he has avoided that tawdry effect which one would expect such gay colours to produce : in this respect resembling Barocci more than any other painter.
Seite 237 - The black and white nations must, in respect of beauty, be considered as of different kinds, at least a different species of the same kind ; from one of which to the other, as I observed, no inference can be drawn. Novelty is said to be one of the causes of beauty : that novelty is a very sufficient reason why we should admire, is not denied ; but, because it is uncommon, is it, therefore, beautiful? The beauty that is produced by...
Seite 411 - The striking brilliancy of his colours, and their lively opposition to each other, the flowing liberty and freedom of his outline, the animated pencil, with which every object is touched, all contribute to awaken and keep alive the attention of the spectator ; awaken in him, in some measure, correspondent sensations, and make him feel a degree of that enthusiasm with which the painter was carried away. To this we may add the complete uniformity in all the parts of the work, so that the whole seems...
Seite 149 - I allude to, and whose loss we lament, in a certain routine of practice, which, to the eyes of common observers, has the air of a learned composition, and bears a sort of superficial resemblance to the manner of the great men who went before them. I know this perfectly well ; but I know likewise, that a man, looking for real and lasting reputation, must unlearn much of the common-place method so observable in the works of the artists whom I have named. For my own part, I confess, I take more interest...

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