"Sir Joshua Reynolds" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... Students of the Royal Academy by Sir Joshua Reynolds. With an Introduction and Notes by ROGER FRY. With Thirty-three Illustrations. Square Crown ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... Spring Gardens promised well, but no Elizabeth appeared. "We have been both to the exhibition and to Sir Joshua Reynolds's, and I am disappointed, for there was nothing like Mrs. D. at either. I can only imagine that Mr. D. prizes any picture of her too much to like it should be exposed to the public eye. I can imagine he would have that sort of feeling—that mixture ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... effect, as well as the 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... curiosity, and be, in the midst of the ruins to which it belongs, an object of far greater interest than a finer production which had taken its splendid but frigid position in this collection. We went to the Sistine Chapel, and saw Michael Angelo's frescoes, which Sir Joshua Reynolds says are the finest paintings in the world, and which the unlearned call great rude daubs. I do not pretend to the capacity of appreciating their merits, but was very much struck with the ease, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... 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 ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... soothed into dreams and visions of our own, even by the gentle garrulity of a connoisseur. Is there any one who pretends to acquaintance with literature, however uninitiated he may be in the mysteries of the arts, who has not read the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and who has not wished, after reading them, to be enabled to say, "anche io son pittore?" When we are told of picture galleries with their thousand works of art, and are warmed by the descriptions, feeble though they must be, of many of them, we seem to be suddenly led by a lamp of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... had been torn from the ruins of antiquity by the hand of the untiring and enterprising excavator. Among the paintings were fine specimens of the skill of Albert Duerer, Murillo, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Sir Joshua Reynolds and other votaries of the brush whose names are immortal. These paintings did not hang on the walls, for they were covered with rich tapestry from the looms of Benares and the Gobelins, but rested on delicately fashioned easels, themselves entitled to a high, rank as works ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... imperfect representation, true as far 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, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... the disgust inspired in minds attuned to earlier Italian art by these once worshiped paintings. Mr. Ruskin's obvious injustice, intemperance, and ostentatious emphasis will serve to point the change of opinion which has passed over England since Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote. His denunciation of the badness of Domenichino's art, though expressed with such a clangor of exaggeration, fairly represents the feeling of modern students. 'The man,' he says, 'who painted the Madonna del Rosario and Martyrdom of S. Agnes in the gallery ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... The father of Sir Joshua Reynolds was master of the Grammar School of Plympton Erle, and here the great painter was born. In the crowded days of his middle life he gave a proof of his interest in his native town by being its Mayor, and on his election presented the town with ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... the above description are eternally chattering about such topics, men who are really eminent in the fine arts never say a word on the subject. Goldsmith describes this matter well in his account of Sir Joshua Reynolds:— ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... introduction to Dr. Johnson took place at the house of Sir Joshua Reynolds. This event, though much desired, was not without dread, lest the great man should happen to be in one of his querulous moods. All fear vanished on her seeing the Doctor approach with a smile on ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... 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 notes on our ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various
... great Dr. Johnson was enthusiastic, insisted upon knowing the author, and soon grew very fond of his little Fanny. He introduced her to his friends, and she became the celebrity of a delightful circle. Sir Joshua Reynolds and Burke sat up all night to finish 'Evelina.' The Thrales, Madame Delaney,—who later introduced her at court,—Sheridan, Gibbon, and Sir Walter Scott, were among those who admired ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... exclamation, hurried away to meet it. As it approached, I discovered a fair, fresh-looking elderly lady, dressed in an old-fashioned riding-habit, with a broad-brimmed white beaver hat, such as may be seen in Sir Joshua Reynolds' paintings. She rode a sleek white pony, and was followed by a footman in rich livery, mounted on an over-fed hunter. At a little distance in the rear came an ancient cumbrous chariot, drawn by two very ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... here is another portrait, quiet, deeply-toned, gentlemanly,—a transcript apparently of one of the more characteristic portraits of Sir Thomas Lawrence. Perhaps, however, of all our British artists, the artist whose published works most nearly resemble a set of these drawings is Sir Joshua Reynolds. We have a folio volume of engravings from his pictures before us; and when, placing side by side with the prints the sketches in brown, we remark the striking similarity of style that prevails between ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... trees, playing with the musket shot, or trying to roll the cannon balls by which the destruction of their dwellings had been effected;—exhibiting a picture of youthful joy and native innocence, while sporting with the instruments of human destruction, which the genius of Sir Joshua Reynolds would have moulded into the expression of pathetic feeling, or employed as ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... 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 were naturally shocked at this singular alleviation of their grief, but ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... Scotland portrait painters flourished at this time. There were so many English artists that in 1768 the Royal Academy was founded, with Sir Joshua Reynolds as its first president. It was to the students of the Royal Academy that he delivered his Discourses upon Art, setting forth the principles which he judged to be sound. He was an indefatigably hard worker until within two years of his death in 1792. All classes of men esteemed ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... done so," answered her friend (at which Olive began to blush for what seemed a thoughtless question). "But Michael has peculiar notions. However, I feel sure he will be a rich man yet—like Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Sir Thomas Lawrence, ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... wisdom, and like true wisdom is prophetic. Then there is that immortal 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 his ejaculation: "Damn paint!" Raphael Mengs wrote. We wish that ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... 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 ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... of whom Shirley speaks, was aide-de-camp to Braddock, and author of a copious and excellent Journal of the expedition, now in the British Museum.[210] His portrait, painted at full length by Sir Joshua Reynolds, hangs in the National Gallery at London. He stands by his horse, a gallant young figure, with a face pale, yet rather handsome, booted to the knee, his scarlet coat, ample waistcoat, and small three-cornered hat all heavy with gold lace. The ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... over the door leading to his 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. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... were uncommonly quick and accurate. His head, and sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of motion like the effect of a palsy: he appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps, or convulsive contractions, [Footnote: Such they appeared to me: but since the first edition, Sir Joshua Reynolds has observed to me, 'that Dr Johnson's extraordinary gestures were only habits, in which he indulged himself at certain times. When in company, where he was not free, or when engaged earnestly in conversation, he never gave way to such habits, which proves that they ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... desk. It happened to be on a line with Ingred's, 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, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... grace. She was not at all clever or imaginative, but very affectionate, and had been the pet of the family at home. She was a neat, pretty little thing, with big blue eyes and arched eyebrows and silky curls, exactly like a Sir Joshua Reynolds portrait, and she had a pathetic way of saying, "Oh, Marjorie!" when snubbed by her elder sister. According to Aunt Vera, if Marjorie needed to "find her level", Dona required to be "well shaken up". She was dreamy and unobservant, slow in her ways, and not much interested in any ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... of seeing one of her sister, but there was no Mrs. Darcy. Perhaps, however, I may find her in the great exhibition, which we shall go to if we have time. I have no chance of her in the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds's paintings, which is now showing in Pall Mall, and which ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... own 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 ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... are buried here, Bishop Heber, John Howard, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Wellington, Nelson and Sir John Moore, who wuz "buried darkly at dead of night," as so many bashful schoolboys know to their sorrow, as they rehearse it in a husky voice to the assembled neighbors the last day of ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Selwyn and Frederick, fifth Earl of Carlisle: from a picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. The dog by the side of Selwyn is his favourite, Raton. Selwyn is dressed in a pale brown coat and breeches, a red vest trimmed with gold lace, and light grey stockings; the Earl of Carlisle in a reddish brown ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... 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. Rich color flushed her cheeks, her eyes sparkled with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... Gallery, and the Vetturi Gallery from Florence, and include Titian's 'Rape of Europa,' Rubens's 'Queen Tomyris dipping Cyrus's head into blood,' Salvator Rosa's 'Death of Regulus,' Vandyck's 'Duke of Lennox,' Sir Joshua Reynolds's 'The Call of Samuel,' and others. But the pictures in which we are most interested are the portraits of literary, scientific, and other worthies—an excellent collection, including Shakespeare, John Locke, Hobbes, Sir Richard Steele, Sir William Temple, Dean Swift, ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... 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 ...
— The Best Portraits in Engraving • Charles Sumner
... 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.]
... papers relating to him that have survived since his death in 1778, little more is known of the Rev. Thomas Morrison of Great Torrington in Devon than the main facts of his life; among those papers, however, are some letters—written by Sir Joshua Reynolds and others—about his literary pursuits, in which Dr. Johnson was at one time ...
— A Pindarick Ode on Painting - Addressed to Joshua Reynolds, Esq. • Thomas Morrison
... upon his work as one of the arts and placed his ideal of achievement very high, and that he received the recognition of the best people of the time as an artist of merit is proved by his election to the Society of Arts with such men as Sir Joshua Reynolds, Horace Walpole, Samuel ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... brief eulogy of 'those admirably proportioned streets so familiar to all students of eighteenth century architecture,' and perhaps a passing reference to 'the shades of Dr. Johnson, Garrick, Hannah More, Sir Joshua Reynolds. Topham Beauclerk, and how many others!' The sooner my protest were put in terms of commerce, the better for my cause. The more clearly I were to point out that such antiquities as the Adelphi are as a magnet to the moneyed tourists of America and Europe, the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... modulation. "I did not expect to find a visitor here 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
... and Graham. Slains castle. Education of children. Buller of Buchan. Entails. Consequence of Peers. Sir Joshua Reynolds. Earl of Errol. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... by the Earl of Ellesmere. The latter presented it to the nation. Edward Capell many years before presented a copy by Ranelagh Barret to Trinity College, Cambridge, and other copies are attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds and Ozias Humphrey (1783). It was engraved by George Vertue in 1719 for Pope's edition (1725), and often later, one of the best engravings being by Vandergucht. A good lithograph from a tracing by Sir George Scharf was published by the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... the shades deftly, lighted the gas, and retired. Honora sank down in one of the upholstered light blue satin chairs and gazed at the shining brass of the coal grate set in the marble mantel, above which hung an engraving of Sir Joshua Reynolds' cherubs. She had an instinct that the climax of the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Messieurs Dilly in the Poultry, at whose hospitable and well-covered table I have seen a greater number of literary men than at any other, except that of Sir Joshua Reynolds, had invited me to meet Mr. Wilkes and some more gentlemen on Wednesday, May 15th. "Pray," said I, "let us have Dr. Johnson." "What, with Mr. Wilkes? not for the world," said Mr. Edward Dilly: ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... part are numerous and very interesting. The busts of the four men standing in the corners of the centre garden have all some local connection. They are those of Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Isaac Newton, and John Hunter. Hogarth's house was on the east, on the site of Tenison's School, and next to it was that of John Hunter, the famous surgeon. Sir Joshua Reynolds bought No. 47 on the west side in 1760, and lived in it until ...
— The Strand District - The Fascination of London • Sir Walter Besant
... repose with increasing confidence and ever-new delight. Such characters are not easily exhibited in the colors of poetry, and when we meet with them there, we are reminded of the effect of Raffaelle's pictures. Sir Joshua Reynolds assures us, that it took him three weeks to discover the beauty of the frescos in the Vatican; and many, if they spoke the truth, would prefer one of Titian's or Murillo's Virgins to one of Raffaelle's heavenly Madonnas. The less there is of marked expression or vivid ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... 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, whether he paints the ridiculousness ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... it is a wondrous 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, and painted indeed on opposite ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... deny, however, that Walpole's writings have real merit, and merit of a very rare, though not of a very high kind. Sir Joshua Reynolds used to say that, though nobody would for a moment compare Claude to Raphael, there would be another Raphael before there was another Claude. And we own that we expect to see fresh Humes and fresh Burkes before we again fall in with that peculiar combination of moral and intellectual ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the effect by the bold intermixture of realities, and by an appeal, as it were, to the individual knowledge and experience of the reader. He affords few subjects for picture. There is, indeed, one gigantic one, that of Count Ugolino, of which Michael Angelo made a bas-relief, and which Sir Joshua Reynolds ought not to ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... accomplished in the seventeenth century by English artists, who practised enamel painting, notably by Jervais, who in 1717 executed from designs by Sir Joshua Reynolds the beautiful west window of ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... from reproach; the art of gardening, or, as he prefers to call it, '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
... had always lived in an atmosphere of art, and his reminiscences of painters and sculptors 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 ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... too strongly, and drawn away the attention 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
... was painted by 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 ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... recollect the spot, unless it were Arundel Castle in Sussex, but I am not sure: none was ever painted so since the days of Pietro Perugino I believe, so their antiquity is unquestionable: he and his few contemporaries drew her white, as Sir Joshua Reynolds and Pompeio Battoni. ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... if Mrs. Siddons was really as beautiful as that?" she said, pointing to the print. "Sir Joshua Reynolds is reported to have ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... 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, ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... to the sitters and transferred to his canvas, not only a life-likeness, but a positively noble dignity in that likeness. What in Van Dyck and Sir Joshua Reynolds was the bestowing of high breeding and dainty refinement, became under Titian's brush dignity, pure and simple, very quiet, and wonderfully real. There is this peculiarity in connection with the number of portraits which Titian executed, that many of them ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... charm was, that she used to take my daughter, then a child, on her lap, and sing a number of childish songs with such a playfulness of manner, and such a sweetness of look and voice, as was quite enchanting."] of Mr. Coote, who were the originals of the children introduced into Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of Mrs. Sheridan as St. Cecilia. It was here that the Duchess of Devonshire first met Sheridan; and, as I have been told, long hesitated as to the propriety of inviting to her house two persons of such equivocal rank in society, as ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... deserve the illustration of a riper judgment. Upon the whole, I may apply to the first labour of my pen the speech of a far superior artist, when he surveyed the first productions of his pencil. After viewing some portraits which he had painted in his youth, my friend Sir Joshua Reynolds acknowledged to me, that he was rather humbled than flattered by the comparison with his present works; and that after so much time and study, he had conceived his improvement to be much greater than he found ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... and Bull, 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 it ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... to travel he returned with his wife to England, where the story of Lady Harriet's bravery and devotion was already well-known. A portrait of her, in which she is depicted standing in the boat holding aloft a white handkerchief, was exhibited in the Royal Academy and engraved. Sir Joshua Reynolds also painted ...
— Noble Deeds of the World's Heroines • Henry Charles Moore
... connoisseur's collection. It filled the large gallery adjoining his extensive home on Washington Square and was not only the best in the city, containing as it did examples of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Chrome, Sully, and many of the modern French school—among them two fine Courbets and a Rousseau—but it had lately been enriched by one or more important American landscapes, notably Sanford Gifford's "Catskill Gorge" and Church's "Tropics"—two canvases which had attracted more ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the king, "if you had not written so well." Johnson observed to me, upon this, that "no man could have paid a handsomer compliment; and it was fit for a king to pay. It was decisive." When asked by another friend, at Sir Joshua Reynolds's, whether he made any reply to this high compliment, he answered, "No, sir. When the King had said it, it was to be so. It was not for me to bandy civilities with my sovereign." Perhaps no man who had spent ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... except about his own works, of which Sir Joshua Reynolds said he was always willing to talk, and glad to have them introduced. Johnson when he carried Mr. Langton to see him, professed that he could bring him out into conversation, and used this allusive expression, "Sir, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... he delivered an address which was published in the "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)
... henceforth he was free from heavy hack-work and literary drudgery, and could give himself up to the largest enjoyment of that for which he cared most— social conversation. He was the best talker of his time; and he knew everybody worth knowing— Burke, Goldsmith, Gibbon, the great painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, and many other able men. In 1764 he founded the "Literary Club," which still exists and meets in London. Oddly enough, although a prolific writer, it is to another person— to Mr James Boswell, who first met him in 1763— that he owes his greatest and most lasting fame. A much larger number of ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... (Vol. viii., p. 102.).—I think I can certify A. Z. that two distinct branches of the Palmer family, the Deans, and another claiming like kindred to Sir Joshua Reynolds, still exist; from which I conclude that Sir Joshua had at least two nephews of that name. I regret that I cannot inform your correspondent as to the authorship of the piece about which he inquires; but, in ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 201, September 3, 1853 • Various
... was possessed of the finest paintings of the world, without the slightest claim to the advancement of the art. And if the opinion of Sir Joshua Reynolds is correct, art could soar no higher in the realm of painting, as well as of statuary. Yet the Romans learned to place as high value on the works of Grecian genius as the English do on the paintings of the old masters of Italy and Flanders. And if ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... 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 ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... wide, and orders came pouring in upon him, insomuch that he became a rich man and a Royal Academician, and ultimately President of the Academy. He married an authoress, and his remains were deposited in St. Paul's Cathedral, near to those of Sir Joshua Reynolds. I have heard my grandfather say that he met him once in the town of Helston, and he described him as somewhat rough and unpolished, but a sterling, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... 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
... house, with the stairs forming the fourth. It was hung with pictures, save where two or three doors broke the wall-space. Singular pictures they were, mostly family portraits, it was evident. Some of them were very good, though the gems of the collection, the Copleys and Stuarts, and the precious Sir Joshua Reynolds, were in the drawing-rooms below. The girls ran from one to the other, and great was their delight to recognise here and there one of the very gowns they had been admiring ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... Gainsborough Ipswich has enduring claims on the English nation and on lovers of art and artists everywhere. That must have been a Suffolk man who passed the following criticism on Gainsborough's celebrated picture of 'Girl and Pigs,' of which Sir Joshua Reynolds became the purchaser at one hundred guineas, though the artist asked but sixty: 'They be deadly like pigs; but who ever saw pigs feeding together, but one on 'em had a foot in the trough?' Gainsborough had an enthusiastic ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... of scholars; yet he himself may be excused for thinking it a kind of glory to have lived so many years in the companionship of one of the greatest of human intelligences, and in some degree, more perhaps than others, to have had the privilege of understanding him (Sir Joshua Reynolds' Lectures: ...
— Charmides • Plato
... to Sir Joshua Reynolds, 'Every person who knew Dr. Johnson must have observed that the moment he was left out of the conversation, whether from his deafness or from whatever cause, but a few minutes without speaking or listening, his mind ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... cognoscenti, be sure to make no 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 ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... 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
... a classical scholar and, like most of the forerunners of the romantic school, was a trifle shame-faced over his Gothic heresies. Sir Joshua Reynolds had supplied a painted window of classical design for New College, Oxford; and Warton, in some complimentary verses, professes that those "portraitures of Attic art" have won him back to the true taste;[9] and prophesies that henceforth angels, ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... her tribe. Her hair shone like gold, and it had been dressed by a maid who had acquired her art at the hands of a famous Parisian coiffeur; her complexion, of a delicate ivory, was tinted with the blush of a rose; her lips were the Cupid-bow lips which Sir Joshua Reynolds loved to paint. Naturally graceful, her figure was indebted to her modiste for every adventitious aid the art of modern dressmaking can bestow. Nell knew too little of dress to fully appreciate the exquisite perfection of the toilette de la danse; she could only admire and wonder. It was of a soft ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... epochs grow inevitably associated. We find this now in the formation of the Literary Club, of which many of the most moving minds of that day in which Goldsmith lived were members. The Club met on Monday evenings in the Turk's Head Tavern, Soho. It was in working order in 1764. Sir Joshua Reynolds was its founder. Goldsmith's membership of the Literary Club, happy as it was, marks great misunderstandings involved in that misguided judgment passed upon the man by his contemporaries, which posterity has been content too easily to accept. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... Chesterfield On Scotland Cleveland Epigrams of Peter Pindar Edmund Burke's Attack on Warren Hastings On an Artist On the Conclusion of his Odes The Lex Talionis upon Benjamin West Barry's Attack upon Sir Joshua Reynolds On the Death of Mr. Hone On George the Third's Patronage of Benjamin West Another on the Same Epitaph on Peter Staggs Tray's Epitaph On a Stone thrown at a very great Man, etc. A Consolatory StanzaEpigrams by Robert Burns. The Poet's Choice On ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... his embassy with a mixture of excitement and embarrassment which caused him to turn aside with his hand on the curtain, and to examine intently for several moments the portrait of a lady, optimistically said by Mrs. Hilbery to be an early work of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Then, with some unnecessary fumbling, he drew aside the curtain, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground, repeated his message and suggested that they should all spend the evening at the play. Katharine accepted the suggestion ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... was in this case accidental, or significant of absolute impecuniosity, the less pleasant interpretation is not improbable. He would walk the streets all night with his friend, Savage, when their combined funds could not pay for a lodging. One night, as he told Sir Joshua Reynolds in later years, they thus perambulated St. James's Square, warming themselves by declaiming against Walpole, and nobly resolved that they would stand by ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... way to Edinburgh for the sole purpose of seeing Sir Walter Scott as he passed along the street. We unconsciously admire the enthusiasm of the lad, and respect the impulse which impelled him to make the journey. It is related of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that when a boy of ten, he thrust his hand through intervening rows of people to touch Pope, as if there were a sort of virtue in the contact. At a much later period, the painter Haydon was proud to see and ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... 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 ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock |
