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XIV.—The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Elbert N. S. Thompson
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Extract

The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds formulate a theory of painting which elevates that art to a kinship with the then more firmly established art of poetry. On the ground that painting is no mere handicraft, the great president of the Royal Academy recommended to his pupils “not the industry of the hands, but of the mind,” and insisted that a successful painter “stands in need of more knowledge than is to be picked off his palette.” This general assertion is then amplified, in one of the most significant passages of the lectures. “Every man,” Reynolds continued, “whose business is description, ought to be tolerably conversant with the poets, … that he may imbibe a poetical spirit, and enlarge his stock of ideas. He ought not to be wholly unacquainted with that part of philosophy which gives an insight into human nature… . He ought to know something concerning the mind, as well as a great deal concerning the body of man.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , 1917 , pp. 339 - 366
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1917

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References

1 Discourses, vii, pp. 91-92.

2 Ibid., p. 92.

3 Boswell's Life, ed. G. B. Hill, iii, p. 420.

4 Ibid., i, p. 284, n.

5 Ibid., iv, p. 370.

6 Discourses, vii, p. 93. Boswell, i, p. 235.

7 Discourses, xii, p. 176. Rasselas, chaps. xvi, xx.

8 Discourses, xiv, p. 221.

9 Boswell, i, pp. 149, n., 421, n., IV, p. 370.

10 Shaftesbury, A Notion of the Historical Draught or Tablature of the Judgment of Hercules, ed. 1714, pp. 6-13; du Bos, Réflexions Critiques sur la Poésie et sur la Peinture, chap. xiii; Harris, A Discourse on Music, Painting, and Poetry, chaps. ii, iv, v.

11 Les Beaux Arts Réduits à un même Principe, Paris, 1747.

12 See W. G. Howard, Publications, Modem Language, Association, vols. XXII, XXIV, and edition of Laokoon, New York, 1910.

13 Discourses, xiii, p. 205.

14 Discourses, xv, pp. 229-230.

15 Ibid., i, p. 4.

16 Ibid., vii, p. 109.

17 Dryden, Parallel, ed. Ker, p. 124. Shaftesbury, Judgment of Hercules, p. 43.

18 Discourses, xiii, p. 206; vii, p. 108.

19 Essay on Criticism, 11. 118-127. Discourses, ii, p. 14; xiv, p. 211; vi, p. 72.

20 Discourses, xiv, p. 211; ii, p. 14; vi, p. 75.

21 Discourses, i, p. 4; xii, pp. 186-187.

22 Essay on Criticism, 11. 68-73, 130-135. Cf. Discourses, iii, p. 28; vi, p. 78; iii, pp. 22, 23, 27; xiii, pp. 197, 200.

23 Discourses, iii, p. 31. Compare this passage with the paragraph from Rasselas quoted below, and note the verbal similarities.

24 Essay on Painting, ed. 1715, p. 162. Essay on the Art of Criticism, ed. 1719, p. 30.

25 Les Beaux Arts, p. 27.

26 Ed. 1759, pp. 63, 143.

27 Traité des Premières Vérités, i, chap. xiii; ii, chap. xiv.

28 Rasselas, chap. x. See above, p. 351.

29 Boswell, iv, p. 259, n.

30 Judgment of Hercules, ed. 1714, p. 4.

31 Discourses, iv, p. 45; iii, pp. 24, 35, 33.

32 Discourses, iv, p. 40.

33 Ibid., xi, p. 171.

34 Ibid., viii, p. 120.

35 Ibid., vii, p. 95.

36 Ibid., xi, p. 160. Spectator Papers, no. 409.

37 Essays on 'the Intellectual Powers of Man, “Of Taste,” 1785. Akenside took the same view in Pleasures of Imagination. 1744.

38 Discourses, vii, p. 91.

39 Ibid., ii, p. 13; vii, pp. 107-109.

40 Essay on Taste, p. 105.

41 Essays on the Intellectual Powers, “Of Taste,” 1785.

42 No. 120, 1756.

43 Discourses, ix, p. 144.

44 Ibid., vii, p. 93; viii, p. 139. Inquiry, ii, sects. 3-5. See also W. G. Howard, Burke among the Forerunners of Lessing. Publications, Modern Language Association, xxii, pp. 608-632.

45 Discourses, xiii, p. 196.

46 Ibid., xv, p. 230.

47 Idler, no. 82; Traité des Premières Vérités, chap. xiii.

48 Ibid., chap. v.

49 De Veritate, ed. 1624, p. 2.

50 Spectator Papers, no. 29, 1711.

51 De Oratore, i, 3, c. 195, 197. Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting, p. 17.

52 Discourses, vii, p. 107.

53 Pleasures of Imagination, i, p. 375, n., 1744.

54 Judgment of Hercules, last page.

55 Quoted from the biography by Sir William Forbes, p. 358.

56 Discourses, xiii, p. 195.

57 Ibid., viii, p. 119; ix, pp. 143-144.