Seven Discourses on Art Annotated edition by Sir Joshua Reynolds Joe Reese Arts Photography eBooks
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A DISCOURSE
Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of the Prizes, December 11, 1769, by the President.
Gentlemen,—I congratulate you on the honour which you have just received. I have the highest opinion of your merits, and could wish to show my sense of them in something which possibly may be more useful to you than barren praise. I could wish to lead you into such a course of study as may render your future progress answerable to your past improvement; and, whilst I applaud you for what has been done, remind you of how much yet remains to attain perfection.
I flatter myself, that from the long experience I have had, and the unceasing assiduity with which I have pursued those studies, in which, like you, I have been engaged, I shall be acquitted of vanity in offering some hints to your consideration. They are indeed in a great degree founded upon my own mistakes in the same pursuit. But the history of errors properly managed often shortens the road to truth. And although no method of study that I can offer will of itself conduct to excellence, yet it may preserve industry from being misapplied.
In speaking to you of the theory of the art, I shall only consider it as it has a relation to the method of your studies.
Dividing the study of painting into three distinct periods, I shall address you as having passed through the first of them, which is confined to the rudiments, including a facility of drawing any object that presents itself, a tolerable readiness in the management of colours, and an acquaintance with the most simple and obvious rules of composition.
This first degree of proficiency is, in painting, what grammar is in literature, a general preparation to whatever species of the art the student may afterwards choose for his more particular application. The power of drawing, modelling, and using colours is very properly called the language of the art; and in this language, the honours you have just received prove you to have made no inconsiderable progress.
When the artist is once enabled to express himself with some degree of correctness, he must then endeavour to collect subjects for expression; to amass a stock of ideas, to be combined and varied as occasion may require. He is now in the second period of study, in which his business is to learn all that has hitherto been known and done. Having hitherto received instructions from a particular master, he is now to consider the art itself as his master. He must extend his capacity to more sublime and general instructions. Those perfections which lie scattered among various masters are now united in one general idea, which is henceforth to regulate his taste and enlarge his imagination. With a variety of models thus before him, he will avoid that narrowness and poverty of conception which attends a bigoted admiration of a single master, and will cease to follow any favourite where he ceases to excel. This period is, however, still a time of subjection and discipline. Though the student will not resign himself blindly to any single authority when he may have the advantage of consulting many, he must still be afraid of trusting his own judgment, and of deviating into any track where he cannot find the footsteps of some former master.
The third and last period emancipates the student from subjection to any authority but what he shall himself judge to be supported by reason. Confiding now in his own judgment, he will consider and separate those different principles to which different modes of beauty owe their original. In the former period he sought only to know and combine excellence, wherever it was to be found, into one idea of perfection; in this he learns, what requires the most attentive survey and the subtle disquisition, to discriminate perfections that are incompatible with each other.
He is from this time to regard himself as holding the same rank with those masters whom he before obeyed as teach
Seven Discourses on Art Annotated edition by Sir Joshua Reynolds Joe Reese Arts Photography eBooks
About arts education--why are so many art students more than girls at 16 and less than women at 30? It is hard to believe for 250 years art teachers have been struggling with that. Actually, Reynolds wrote of it as boys to men, not girls to women, so in the years since 1769, some things have changed.That said, if you want historical perspective on the problem of creating art, and of teaching artists, this is a wonderful taste of it. It is written in the style of the times, and reflects the values, assumptions, beliefs and so on of the era (starting with the fawning gratitude for royal patronage--hard for this American to believe that the guy Reynolds is thanking so effusively for founding the Royal Academy is the same odious tyrant whose injustices prompted the American Revolution. But no matter).
Reynolds discourses have frequently been boiled down to a single claim--the established rules are not fetters for genius, but only for weaker talents. But there is a great deal more here. Part of what makes it so fascinating is that his complacent acceptance of the tastes of his times challenges our own implicit assumptions about our own era's conventions, while at at the same time his observations about art instruction and the development of artists continue to ring true (who can dispute, in an era lamenting the 'de-skilling' of art, that for the representational artist, the basics of drafting, color and composition are the essential fundamentals.
In the last half century the visual arts have lost some of their focus and their definition has loosened considerably. Reynolds ('sir sloshua' to the pre-Raphaelites) obviously has nothing to say about abstract expressionism or much of contemporary art--video, performance, installations, etc. If that's what you're looking for, these prize day speeches from the late 18th century won't offer you much. But if your interests are more focused--and lie in drawing and painting--or less focused--and concern arts education or issues in cultural transmission--it's pretty interesting summer reading.
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Seven Discourses on Art Annotated edition by Sir Joshua Reynolds Joe Reese Arts Photography eBooks Reviews
Outstanding insight into the thinking behind the founder of Britain's Royal Academy. Certainly great value for the price! )
About arts education--why are so many art students more than girls at 16 and less than women at 30? It is hard to believe for 250 years art teachers have been struggling with that. Actually, Reynolds wrote of it as boys to men, not girls to women, so in the years since 1769, some things have changed.
That said, if you want historical perspective on the problem of creating art, and of teaching artists, this is a wonderful taste of it. It is written in the style of the times, and reflects the values, assumptions, beliefs and so on of the era (starting with the fawning gratitude for royal patronage--hard for this American to believe that the guy Reynolds is thanking so effusively for founding the Royal Academy is the same odious tyrant whose injustices prompted the American Revolution. But no matter).
Reynolds discourses have frequently been boiled down to a single claim--the established rules are not fetters for genius, but only for weaker talents. But there is a great deal more here. Part of what makes it so fascinating is that his complacent acceptance of the tastes of his times challenges our own implicit assumptions about our own era's conventions, while at at the same time his observations about art instruction and the development of artists continue to ring true (who can dispute, in an era lamenting the 'de-skilling' of art, that for the representational artist, the basics of drafting, color and composition are the essential fundamentals.
In the last half century the visual arts have lost some of their focus and their definition has loosened considerably. Reynolds ('sir sloshua' to the pre-Raphaelites) obviously has nothing to say about abstract expressionism or much of contemporary art--video, performance, installations, etc. If that's what you're looking for, these prize day speeches from the late 18th century won't offer you much. But if your interests are more focused--and lie in drawing and painting--or less focused--and concern arts education or issues in cultural transmission--it's pretty interesting summer reading.
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