"Sir Joshua Reynolds" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mark for which warrant cannot be found in Rubens, Sarto, Guido Reni, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, Raffael, Michelangelo, or Trajan's Column. For further information consult "The Discourses" of Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A., whose recipes are made palatable by a quality infrequent in his ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... becoming the National Burial Church. It is already well filled with monuments of British worthies and heroes of this and the last century. Of men distinguished in Literature, Art, and Science, there are buried here Dr. Johnson, Hallam the historian, Sir Joshua Reynolds the painter, Turner the painter, Rennie the engineer who built Waterloo Bridge, Sir William Jones, the great Oriental scholar, and Sir Astley Cooper, the great surgeon. There is also buried here, ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... a man Velasquez was the equal, in his way, of any of the men just named. Ruskin has said, "Everything that Velasquez does may be regarded as absolutely right." And Sir Joshua Reynolds placed himself on record by saying, "The portrait of Pope Innocent the Tenth by Velasquez, in the Doria Gallery, is the finest portrait in all Rome." Yet until the year Seventeen Hundred Seventy-six, a date Americans can easily remember, the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... painting; that it would make the exhibition more pleasing, and that the eye would be rested sometimes by turning from the colors to the marble, and would see the colors of the paintings better in return. Sir Joshua Reynolds mentions the power which some of the Flemish pictures seemed to derive, in his opinion, by looking at them after having consulted his note-book. Statuary placed among the pictures would have the same effect. I would not have the sculpture that was sent in for ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... recess on the south is the slab of Sir Christopher Wren, and near him, in other chapels, Robert Mylne, the architect of old Blackfriars Bridge, and John Rennie, the architect of Waterloo Bridge. Beneath the pavement lies Sir Joshua Reynolds (1742), who had an almost royal funeral in St. Paul's, dukes and marquises contending for the honor of being his pallbearers. Around him are buried his disciples and followers—Lawrence (1830), Barry (1806), Opie (1807), ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various
... literary club met at the Turk's Head from 1763 to 1783. Among the most notable members were Johnson, the arbiter of English prose; Oliver Goldsmith; Boswell, the biographer; Burke, the orator; Garrick, the actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, the painter. Among the later members were Gibbon, the historian; and Adam Smith, the ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Less known is the Essay on Hogarth, although it is more elaborate and critical; the labor being quite necessary in this case, as the pretensions of Hogarth to the grand style had been denounced by Sir Joshua Reynolds. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... about 105 feet in length, and the collection of books is worthy of the well known literary taste of the noble proprietor. Here also are several fine busts by Nollekens, and a valuable collection of pictures by Sir Godfrey Kneller, Sir Joshua Reynolds, &c. two fine landscapes by Salvator Rosa, and a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 374 • Various
... different type, is John Hardham. "When they talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff," wrote Goldsmith of Sir Joshua Reynolds, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... the Hon. F. L. King Noel, in sanctioning the examination and collation of the MS. of Beppo, now in his possession; and of Mrs. Horace Pym of Foxwold Chace, for permitting the portrait of Sheridan by Sir Joshua Reynolds to be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... 'the art of creating landscape,' pressed forward to perfection; engraving much elevated; and painting, if less perceptibly advanced, still (towards the close of the reign, at any rate) ransomed from insipidity by the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The king himself, it was conceded, had 'little propensity to refined pleasure;' but his consort, Queen Caroline, was credited with a lively anxiety to reward merit and to encourage ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Sir Joshua Reynolds made seven portraits of the lovely "Walpole Beauty." Years afterward, when he was at work on his famous painting of her three daughters, Walpole begged him to pose them "as the three Graces, adorning a bust of the Duchess as the Magna Mater." "But," adds the veteran ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... Ali, and preserver of our Indian Empire), and then got safely to Inverness. Next day we went to Macbeth's Castle. I had a romantic satisfaction in seeing Dr. Johnson actually in it. It perfectly corresponds with Shakespeare's description, which Sir Joshua Reynolds has so happily illustrated in one of his ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... at Edinburgh, and at Leyden. He spent some time in wandering over continental Europe, often in poverty and want. In 1756 he became a resident of London, where he made the acquaintance of several celebrated men, among whom were Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds. His writings are noted for their purity, grace, and fluency. His fame as a poet is secured by "The Traveler," and "The Deserted Village;" as a dramatist, by "She Stoops to Conquer;" and as a novelist, by "The Vicar of Wakefield." His reckless extravagance always ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... child Locker was thought by his parents to be very like Sir Joshua Reynolds' picture of Puck, an engraving of which was in the home at Greenwich Hospital, and certainly Locker carried to his grave more than a suspicion of what is called Puckishness. In My Confidences there are traces ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... Sir Joshua Reynolds.—"What do you ask for this sketch?" said Sir Joshua to an old picture-dealer, whose portfolio he was looking over. "Twenty guineas, your honour." "Twenty pence, I suppose you mean?" "No, sir; it is true I would have taken ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... gossip Vasari, a very biassed critic and not too nice to his contemporaries. He need not indulge in what is called the woad argument; we sha'n't go back to the early Britons for our authorities. Let us come to Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose Discourses are invaluable—and also to be taken well salted; he was encrusted with fine old English prejudices. One of his magnificent sayings and one appreciated by the entire artistic tribe was ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... make one another famous on many serious occasions, from Man and Superman to Androcles; and Mr Charles Ricketts has not disdained to snatch moments from his painting and sculpture to design some wonderful dresses for us. We three unbent as Mrs Siddons, Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr Johnson might have unbent, to devise a turn for the Coliseum variety theatre. Not that we would set down the art of the variety theatre as something to be condescended to, or our own art as elephantine. We should rather crave indulgence ...
— Annajanska, the Bolshevik Empress • George Bernard Shaw
... thrown a little backward as she walks, give an expression of hauteur which is not contradicted by the cold grey eye. The tucked-in kerchief, rising full over the low tight bodice of her blue dress, sets off the majestic form of her bust, and she treads the lawn as if she were one of Sir Joshua Reynolds' stately ladies, who had suddenly stepped from her frame to enjoy the ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... doctor evidently lived up to his reputation as a tea-drinker at all times and places. Cumberland, the dramatist, in his memoirs gives a story illustrative of the doctor's tea-drinking powers: "I remember when Sir Joshua Reynolds, at my home, reminded Dr. Johnson that he had drunk eleven cups of tea. 'Sir,' he replied, 'I did not count your glasses of wine; why should you number my ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... painter of the day, who was on terms of intimacy with Talbot, and who with the benevolence of real superiority was known to take a keen interest in the success of more youthful and inexperienced genius,—it was a peculiar object of desire to Warner, that Sir Joshua Reynolds should see his picture before it was completed; and Clarence, aware of this wish, easily obtained from Talbot a promise that it should be effected. That was the least service of his zeal touched by the earnestness of Linden's friendship, anxious to oblige in ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that I am also drawn to the kind of ladies that Gainsborough and Sir Joshua Reynolds painted. They certainly turned out some mighty good-looking ladies in those days, and they were tasty dressers, too, and I enjoy looking at their pictures. Coming down the line a little farther, I want to state that there is also something very fascinating in those soft-boiled ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... masterpieces at the National Gallery, or the Greek bronzes at the British Museum. Certainly she would not be at the Royal Academy, for the culture of Riseholme, led by herself, rejected as valueless all artistic efforts later than the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and a great deal of what went before. Her husband with his firm grasp of the obvious, on the other hand, would be disappointingly capable even before her maid confirmed his conjecture, of concluding that she had merely ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... the charming "My mother bids me bind my hair." And then there was Mrs Billington, the famous singer, whom Michael Kelly describes as "an angel of beauty and the Saint Cecilia of song." There is no more familiar anecdote than that which connects Haydn with Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of this notorious character. Carpani is responsible for the tale. He says that Haydn one day found Mrs Billington sitting to Reynolds, who was painting her as St Cecilia listening to the angels. "It is like," said ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... counted on when works of value are for sale. But the works must be of value. At a former auction in New York "old masters" brought these prices: Madonna Del Correggio, $30; two Murrillos, $160 and $90; a landscape of Salvator Rosa, $55; a Tintoretto, $115; a Guido, $35; "St. John," by Sir Joshua Reynolds, $15—and so on. Every few months we find a so-called Titian or Raphael going for the price of the frame. Such auctions tell a story as emphatic as that ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... "Atlantic Monthly" for August of the same year. Thoreau had many rare and admirable qualities, and Thoreau pictured by Emerson is a more living personage than White of Selborne would have been on the canvas of Sir Joshua Reynolds. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... velvet looped up with bands of gold. Her bare arms, models worthy of the chisel of Canova, gleamed from the rich sables which lined the hanging sleeves of her dress. Her hair, dark as night, was gathered up in the high fashion Sir Joshua Reynolds loved to depict. A half-moon of enormous diamonds fastened a plume over her left temple, and her neck and fingers flashed back the colors of the rainbow from a thousand gems. As to her face, it was radiant. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... degree, an accident. In the London of their time, the almost total cessation of intercourse with continental Europe, due to the war with France, had not prevented the academical standard from penetrating and taking root. The independence of Hogarth in the preceding century had been without result; and Sir Joshua Reynolds, in principle if not always in practice, had preached the doctrine of submission to accepted formulas. Benjamin West, who had succeeded him as president of the Royal Academy, was little but an academic formula himself; and landscape ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... most needful. This makes the importance of a background of trees, of shrubs, and creepers, and the uniting lines of sheds, piazzas, etc., mediating and easing off the shock which the upstart mass inflicts upon the eye. Hence Sir Joshua Reynolds's rule for the color of a house, to imitate the tint of the soil where it is to stand. Hence the advantage of a well-assured base and generally of a pyramidal outline, because this is the figure of braced and balanced equilibrium, assured to all natural objects by the slow operation of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... from the sculpture. But imagine the feeling with which a French master workman would first see these clumsy intersections of curves. It would be exactly the sensation with which a practical botanical draughtsman would look at a foliage background of Sir Joshua Reynolds. ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... again he was mixed up in a little affair with the great Mrs. Billington, whose beautiful person was no less marked than her fine voice. Sir Joshua Reynolds was painting her portrait for him, and had represented her as St. Cecilia listening to celestial music. Haydn paid her a charming compliment at ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... trustee of the British Museum; an honorary member of the Royal Academy; a correspondent of the French Institute. He was also a member of 'The Club'—the small dining-club which was founded in 1764 by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Dr. Johnson, and which since then has included in its fortnightly dinners the great majority of those Englishmen who in many walks of life have been most distinguished by their genius or their accomplishments. He ...
— Historical and Political Essays • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... need much comment. His majesty was pleased to appropriate those very splendid apartments in Somerset-house for the use of artists, who shortly formed a new society, over which, by his majesty's special command, the great Sir Joshua Reynolds presided. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... first to one celebrated character and then to another, as it suits the demand and fashion of the day: just as our printsellers, with a few touches, change the portrait of General Washington into the head of the king of France, and a capital print of Sir Joshua Reynolds into a striking likeness of ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... down, we may specify or emphasise a few chefs d'oeuvre, such as Hogarth's Prints in the first or best states, Turner's Liber Studiorum, Sir Joshua Reynolds' Graphic Works, and Lodge's Portraits. But we are neither so wealthy nor so advanced as our French and German neighbours in this direction, and the former may be affirmed to stand alone in the possession of a class of books with engravings ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Jameson observed, Sir Joshua Reynolds has given us a paraphrase of Raphael's painting of music's patron saint in his fine picture of Mrs. Billington, the famous English singer of his last years, as St. Cecilia. She holds a music book ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... and canon of York, died in 1797. His friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted an impressive portrait of him, which is engraved by Doughty. A masterly copy of this fine portrait is in Mr. Cadell's Contemporary Portraits. A copy is also prefixed to the edition of his works, in 4 vols. 8vo. ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... of which I bought some. I frequently went to the Fitzwilliam Gallery, and my taste must have been fairly good, for I certainly admired the best pictures, which I discussed with the old curator. I read also with much interest Sir Joshua Reynolds' book. This taste, though not natural to me, lasted for several years, and many of the pictures in the National Gallery in London gave me much pleasure; that of Sebastian del Piombo exciting in me a ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... Lord Chesterfield was a man who had no friend, we sum up his character in those few words. Just after his death a small but distinguished party of men dined together at Topham Beauclerk's. There was Sir Joshua Reynolds; Sir William Jones, the orientalist; Bennet Langton; Steevens; Boswell; Johnson. The conversation turned on Garrick, who, Johnson said, had friends, but no friend. Then Boswell asked, 'what is a friend?' 'One who comforts and supports you, while others do not.' 'Friendship, you know, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... east window at the end of the Lady Chapel was filled formerly with stained glass, representing "The Resurrection," after a design by Sir Joshua Reynolds; it is now replaced by modern glass in memory of the late Dean Lear. An altarpiece, composed of fragments of the destroyed Hungerford and Beauchamp Chapels, was set up here by Wyatt. It has lately been replaced ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... study. The general collection then began by Lord Sandys and Lord Westcote, (Lyttelton,) two early noble friends of Mr. Thrale. Then followed Dr. Johnson, Mr. Burke, Dr. Goldsmith, Mr. Murphy, Mr. Garrick, Mr. Baretti, Sir Robert Chambers, and Sir Joshua Reynolds himself,—all painted in the highest style of this great master, who much delighted in this his Streatham Gallery. There was place left but for one more frame when the acquaintance with Dr. Burney ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... comparing them with his translation of Homer, which, I do not stand alone in regarding, as the main source of our pseudo-poetic diction. And this, by the bye, is an additional confirmation of a remark made, I believe, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, that next to the man who forms and elevates the taste of the public, he that corrupts it, is commonly the greatest genius. Among other passages, I analyzed sentence by sentence, and almost word ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... fail to notice the success with which Charles de Bernard introduces people of rank and breeding into his stories. Whether or not he drew from nature, his portraits of this kind are exquisitely natural and easy. It is sufficient to say that he is the literary Sir Joshua Reynolds of the post-revolution vicomtes and marquises. We can see that his portraits are faithful; we must feel that they are at the same time charming. Bernard is an amiable and spirited 'conteur' who excels in producing an animated spectacle for a refined and selected public, ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... seem to think you need short-waisted frocks, and drooping hats like Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and the Gainsborough pictures," said their ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... statesmen is he who, in the midst of world politics, neither neglects old friends, nor forgets the claims of literature and art. In this connection it is painful to add that he allowed the yearly stipend of the King's Painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds, to be reduced from L200 to L50. On Reynolds soliciting the secretaryship to the Order of the Bath, he was told that it had been promised to an official of the Treasury. Another request, proffered through his patron, the Duke of Rutland, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... From Hogarth to Sir Joshua Reynolds is a wide step. Sir Joshua is well represented here by some thirty pictures; and Gainsborough is at his side with perhaps half as many. If Sir Joshua had not been a man of genius, he would have been ruined by his academic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... boldly resisted general delusions, and violently, and to the great vexation of his contemporaries, first demonstrated the erroneous nature of many of their opinions, which subsequent experience has shewn to be false. "Present and future time," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, "are rivals; he who pays court to the one, must lay his account with being discountenanced by the other." We augur the more favourably for M. De Tocqueville's lasting fame, from his being no longer quoted by party writers on either ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... Sir Joshua Reynolds, her name appearing in his "Book of Sitters" in July 1788, when she was just over three years of age, and is one of the most famous child-pictures by that great master. The picture shows Little Penelope in a white dress and a dark belt, sitting on a stone sill, with trees in the ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... me?" cries Clive. "We are no such great folks that I know of; and if we were, I say a painter is as good as a lawyer, or a doctor, or even a soldier. In Dr. Johnston's Life—which my father is always reading—I like to read about Sir Joshua Reynolds best: I think he is the best gentleman of all in the book. My! wouldn't I like to paint a picture like Lord Heathfield in the National Gallery! Wouldn't I just! I think I would sooner have done that, than have fought at Gibraltar. And those Three ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... question to be asked about the critic is not whether he is an amateur as an artist, but whether he is an amateur as a critic; and that can be decided only by his criticism. The greatest artist might prove that he was an amateur in criticism; and he could not disprove it by appealing to his art. Sir Joshua Reynolds, for instance, thinks like an amateur in some of his discourses; and it is amateur thinking to defend him by saying that he does not ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... of his reluctance to paint portraits. His failure to go on with a portrait of Burke which he had begun caused a misunderstanding with his early patron. The difference between them is said to have been widened by Burke's growing intimacy with Sir Joshua Reynolds, and by Barry's feeling some little jealousy of the fame and fortune of his rival "in a humbler walk of the art." About the same time he painted a pair of classical subjects, Mercury inventing the lyre, and Narcissus looking at ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... logically due to national or English pictures,—lost to sight and memory for many a year in the Ogygian seclusions of Marlborough House—there have reappeared at last, in more honorable exile at Kensington, two great pictures by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Two, with others; but these alone worth many an entanglement among the cross-roads of the West, to see for half an hour by spring sunshine:—the Holy Family, and the Graces, side by side now in the ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... 'Of Sir Joshua Reynolds, he said, "Sir, I know no man who has passed through life with more ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... improvement upon all our former historical attempts. Whoever has visited the Exhibition will at once know that we allude to Mr Poole's "Plague of London." There has not been so powerful a picture painted in this country since the best days of Sir Joshua Reynolds. For its power we compare it with the "Ugolino" of the President, and we do so the more readily as both pictures are now publicly exhibited. Unlike as they are, unquestionably, in many respects, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... to think that, considering all the disadvantages of circumstances and education under which his genius was developed, there was perhaps hardly ever born a man with a more intense and innate gift of insight into nature than our own Sir Joshua Reynolds. Considered as a painter of individuality in the human form and mind, I think him, even as it is, the prince of portrait painters. Titian paints nobler pictures, and Vandyke had nobler subjects, but neither of them entered so subtly as Sir Joshua ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... important epoch; before the close of the century, almost all of those works had appeared which have had the greatest influence on more recent thinking. These works may be divided into four classes. Under the first, Philosophical Criticism, may be classed Burke's treatise "On the Sublime and Beautiful," Sir Joshua Reynolds's "Discourse on Painting," Campbell's "Philosophy of Rhetoric," Kames's "Elements of Criticism," Blair's "Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres," and ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... and the latter watched her settle herself. She looked her over with the critical air that is generally bestowed on new girls, and decided that she was particularly pretty. Bess was the image of one of the Sir Joshua Reynolds' child angels in the National Gallery. The likeness was so great that her mother had always cut and curled her golden-brown hair in exact copy of the picture. She was a slim, rosy, bright-eyed, smiling specimen of girlhood, and, though on this first morning she ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... windows are so numerous and so beautiful that it is difficult to imagine what many a chapel, hall, and library would be without them. They are of every date, from ancient fragments, such as may be seen in the windows of the Library at Trinity, to the great Sir Joshua Reynolds' window in New College Chapel, and the still later examples of Burne-Jones' art, which are among the chief beauties of the Cathedral; and they include such splendid instances of old Flemish art as may be found in Lincoln ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... to the Students of the Royal Academy by Sir Joshua Reynolds. With an Introduction and Notes by ROGER FRY. With Thirty-three Illustrations. Square Crown 8vo 7s. ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... foundation of conduct or the surface of manners, remain fixed. On the contrary, one of the most interesting things in literature is to mark the shifts and changes in men's standards. For instance, Boswell tells a curious story of the first occasion on which Johnson met Sir Joshua Reynolds. Two ladies of the company were regretting the death of a friend to whom they owed great obligations. Reynolds observed that they had at any rate the comfort of being relieved from a debt of gratitude. The ladies ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... is one of the greatest mysteries of our mortal life. The soul in its moments of illumination feels that it is related to some person like itself, but far higher, and aspires to it. Sir Joshua Reynolds' figure of "Faith" in the famous window in the chapel of New College, Oxford, suggests the attitude of the newly awakened soul. In freshness and beauty it is turning toward the light. But in human experience ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... said to have been founded in the time of Queen Elizabeth; if so, it must have retained its popularity uncommonly long, for it was noted for its gay company in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It is referred to in the Tatler (No. 259), and was visited by Sir Joshua Reynolds and George Morland, the former of whom painted the sign, which hung until 1807. It is said that the Elizabethan house had wonderfully carved ceilings and immense fire-dogs, still in use in 1799. The inn was later the receiving office of the Royal Humane Society, and to ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... labor and a close observation of those whom we regard as our superiors. There is nothing less accidental than the painting of a fine picture, or the chiseling of a noble statue. Every skilled touch of the artist's brush or chisel, though guided by genius, is the product of unremitting study. Sir Joshua Reynolds was such a believer in the force of industry, that he held that artistic excellence, "however expressed by genius, taste, or the gift of heaven may be acquired." Writing to Barry he said, "Whoever is resolved to excel in painting, or indeed any ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... to find useful studies and serious employment." This is the Johnson his readers had known from the beginning. What is newer are the personal touches sprinkled all over the book. Here he will bring in a fact about his friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds; there he will give a piece of information derived from "my father, an old bookseller." He who studied life and manners before all things loves to record the personal habits of his poets and to try their ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... ideas of excellence, the immediate archetypes of sublime imitation, both in painting and in poetry. See Aristotle's 'Poetics,' and the 'Discourses' of Sir Joshua Reynolds.] ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... approach to me, somewhat in the manner of an actor in the part of Horatio, when he addresses Hamlet on the appearance of his father's ghost—"Look, my lord, it comes." I found that I had a very perfect idea of Johnson's figure from the portrait of him painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after he had published his Dictionary, in the attitude of sitting in his easy chair in deep meditation; which was the first picture his friend did for him, which Sir Joshua very kindly presented to me, and from which an engraving has been ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... "10. Thais—Sir Joshua Reynolds, R.A.—The face was painted from the famous Emily Bertie ... It was a cruel snouch in the Painter, a fine Girl having paid him seventy-five guineas for an hour's work, and being unable to pay for the other half of her portrait, to exhibit her with such a sarcastic allusion to her private ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... born in the first year of the present century I consequently can remember both the Plague and Fire of London. The latter is memorable to me as having been the cause of my introduction to Sir CHRISTOPHER WREN, an architect of some note, and an intimate friend of Sir JOSHUA REYNOLDS, and the late Mr. TURNER, R.A. Sir CHRISTOPHER had but one failing—he was never sober. To the day of his death he was under the impression that St. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 13, 1890 • Various
... were never wearisome or dull. He had a store of pleasant anecdotes of Chantrey, whom he had employed as a wood-carver long before he became a modeller in clay; and he had also much to tell us of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose lectures he had attended, and whose studio-talk had been familiar to him while he was a young man and studying art himself as an amateur. It was impossible almost to make Rogers seem a real being as we used to surround his table ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... readings of the first line of the Orlando Furioso." Who is there who would not agree with Shelley quickly if it were a question of having to choose between his inspirational theory of literature and the mechanical theory of the arts advocated by writers like Sir Joshua Reynolds? Literature without inspiration is obviously even a meaner thing than literature without style. But the idea that any man can become an artist by taking pains is merely an exaggerated protest against the idea that a man can become an artist without taking pains. ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... was rather above the middle size, and well proportioned. He excelled in several manly exercises: he was a proficient in horsemanship, and danced with great elegance. His eyes were black, brilliant, and always particularly expressive. Sir Joshua Reynolds, who painted his portrait, is said to have affirmed, that their pupils were larger than those of any human being he had ever met with. They retained their beauty to the last; but the lower parts of his face exhibited, in ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 536, Saturday, March 3, 1832. • Various
... Presidents were numerously represented. But, in this large company, there are very few possessing artistic value. The great portraits of modern times constitute a very short list, like the great poems or histories, and it is the same with engravings as with pictures. Sir Joshua Reynolds, explaining the difference between an historical painter and a portrait-painter, remarks that the former "paints men in general, a portrait-painter a particular man, and consequently a defective model."[1] A portrait, therefore, may be an accurate presentment of its ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... as it reaches, and such as to excite the imagination of a wise beholder to complete it; though falling very far short of what either he or we should otherwise have desired. For instance, here is a suggestion, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, of the general appearance of a British Judge,—requiring the imagination of a very wise beholder indeed to fill it up, or even at first to discover what it is meant for. Nevertheless, it is better art than the Italian St. Cecilia, because the artist, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... of Sir Joshua Reynolds reproached him frequently in his boyish days for his constant attention to drawing, and wrote on the back of one of his sketches the condemnatory words, "Done by Joshua out of pure idleness." Mignard distressed his father the surgeon, by sketching the expressive faces of his patients instead of attending ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... act of justice, but, in our decisions upon poetry especially, may conduce, in a high degree, to the improvement of our own taste: for an accurate taste in poetry, and in all the other arts, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed, is an acquired talent, which can only be produced by thought and a long-continued intercourse with the best models of composition. This is mentioned, not with so ridiculous a purpose as to prevent the most inexperienced ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... tragedy became curiously enough linked with a new memory in Christopher's mind, of more lasting importance than the demise of "Sir Joshua Reynolds" of the ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... were adorned with art treasures of the value of which I had little appreciation those days. But I remember there were canvases of Correggio and Rembrandt and Sir Joshua Reynolds. She was, indeed, a woman of fine taste, who had brought her best to America; for no one had a doubt, in the time of which I am writing, that the settlement of the Compagnie de New York would grow into a great colony, with towns and ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... manner, with Tom Jones or the Vicar of Wakefield or the Citizen of the World. He produced nothing in writing approaching the magnitude of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, or the profundity of Burke's philosophy of politics. Even Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose main business was painting and not the pen, was almost as good an author as he; his Discourses have little to fear when they are set beside Johnson's essays. Yet all these men recognised him as their guide and leader; the spontaneous selection of such a democratic assembly ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... at so early an hour; and I fear that I have permitted myself to experience just a shade of annoyance. If I have seemed ill-natured, pardon me. It is not my nature to find fault, or to criticise. I rather prefer looking upon the bright side. Like Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'I am a wide liker.' There are times, you know, in which we are all tempted to act in a way that gives to others a false impression ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... ubi supra. Mr. Burke notices this noble trait, in a splendid panegyric which he poured forth on the character of Ximenes, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's table, as related by Madame d'Arblay, in the last, and not least remarkable of her productions. (Memoirs of Dr. Burney, vol. ii. pp. 231 et seq.) The orator, if the lady reports him right, notices, as two of the cardinal's characteristics, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... "Bentley's Miscellany," from which moment his artistic position was secured. His first illustration was The Black Mousquetaire. Barham in describing the scene, regretted, oddly enough, that he had neither the pencil of Fuseli or Sir Joshua Reynolds at command, or had himself taken lessons ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... hung, at the time I speak of, between the windows. It was significant of my aunt's idea of her own importance that she should have wished to possess two portraits of herself. The latter was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds when she was in England in 1750, and represents her as a fine, large woman with features which were too big for loveliness in youth, but in after-years went well with her abundant gray hair and unusual stature; for, like the rest of us, she was tall, of vigorous and wholesome build and ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... to talk of the great style, and set themselves up as geniuses, speak slightingly of portrait-painting, as degrading—as pandering to vanity, &c. I verily believe, that half this common cant arose from jealousy of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Degradation indeed!—as if Raffaelle and Titian, and Vandyk and Reynolds, degraded the art, or were degraded by their practice; and as to pandering to vanity—view it in another light, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... accomplishment in bronze casting, but criticizes the other, and usually more admired gate, as "overstepping the limits that separate sculpture from painting," by "massing together figures in multitudes at three and sometimes four distances. He tried to make a place in bas-relief for perspective." Sir Joshua Reynolds finds fault with Ghiberti, also, for working at variance with the severity of sculptural treatment, by distributing small figures in a spacious landscape framework. It was not really in accordance with the limitations ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... gave expression to his ideas in conversation, where his genius always showed most brilliantly. At the tavern meetings of 'The Club' (commonly referred to as 'The Literary Club'), of which Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Goldsmith, Gibbon, and others, were members, he reigned unquestioned conversational monarch. Here or in other taverns with fewer friends he spent most of his nights, talking and drinking incredible quantities of tea, and going ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... perhaps too gentlemanly to pay him. He died poor in 1782. Almack's at first consisted of twenty-seven members, one of whom was C.J. Fox. Gibbon, the historian, was actually a member of it, and says that in spite of the rage for play, he found the society there rational and entertaining. Sir Joshua Reynolds wanted to be a member of it too. 'You see,' says Topham Beauclerk thereupon, 'what noble ambition will make a man attempt. That den is not ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton |
