DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61012#0025
SLR JOSHUA REYNOLDS. xxiii
leading idea that informs them is the necessity for the student
to study the works of the great masters, above all of the Roman
and Tuscan schools ; and on this doctrine, then so new, Rey-
nolds could not insist enough. In his last Discourse, with great
modesty he sums up so ably what he has achieved, that it is
best to let him speak for himself. After saying how unequal he
had been to the expression of his ideas, he continues :—
“To this work, however, I could not be said to come totally
unprovided with materials ; I had seen much, and I had
thought much upon what I had seen ; I had something of a
habit of investigation, and a disposition to reduce all that
I had observed and felt in my own mind to method and
system ; but I thought it indispensably necessary well to
consider the opinions which were to be given out from this
place, and under the sanction of a Royal Academy ; I there-
fore examined not only my own opinions but likewise the
opinions of others.
“ In revising my discourses, it is no small satisfaction to be
assured that I have in no part of them lent my assistance to
foster newly-hatched unfledged opinions, or endeavoured to
support paradoxes, however tempting may have been their
novelty, or however ingenious I might, for the minute, fancy
them to be ; nor shall I, I hope, anywhere be found to have
imposed on the minds of young students declamation for
argument, a smooth period for a sound precept. I have pursued
a plain and honest method; I have taken up the art simply as I
found it exemplified in the practice of the most approved
painters. That approbation which the world has uniformly
given, I have endeavoured to justify by such proofs as questions
of this kind will admit ; by the analogy which painting holds
with the sister arts, and consequently by the common con-
geniality which they all bear to our nature. And though in
what has been done no new discovery is pretended, I may still
flatter myself that from the discoveries which others have made
from their own intuitive good sense and native rectitude of
judgment (in allusion to the works of the old masters) I have
succeeded in establishing the rules and principles of our art on
leading idea that informs them is the necessity for the student
to study the works of the great masters, above all of the Roman
and Tuscan schools ; and on this doctrine, then so new, Rey-
nolds could not insist enough. In his last Discourse, with great
modesty he sums up so ably what he has achieved, that it is
best to let him speak for himself. After saying how unequal he
had been to the expression of his ideas, he continues :—
“To this work, however, I could not be said to come totally
unprovided with materials ; I had seen much, and I had
thought much upon what I had seen ; I had something of a
habit of investigation, and a disposition to reduce all that
I had observed and felt in my own mind to method and
system ; but I thought it indispensably necessary well to
consider the opinions which were to be given out from this
place, and under the sanction of a Royal Academy ; I there-
fore examined not only my own opinions but likewise the
opinions of others.
“ In revising my discourses, it is no small satisfaction to be
assured that I have in no part of them lent my assistance to
foster newly-hatched unfledged opinions, or endeavoured to
support paradoxes, however tempting may have been their
novelty, or however ingenious I might, for the minute, fancy
them to be ; nor shall I, I hope, anywhere be found to have
imposed on the minds of young students declamation for
argument, a smooth period for a sound precept. I have pursued
a plain and honest method; I have taken up the art simply as I
found it exemplified in the practice of the most approved
painters. That approbation which the world has uniformly
given, I have endeavoured to justify by such proofs as questions
of this kind will admit ; by the analogy which painting holds
with the sister arts, and consequently by the common con-
geniality which they all bear to our nature. And though in
what has been done no new discovery is pretended, I may still
flatter myself that from the discoveries which others have made
from their own intuitive good sense and native rectitude of
judgment (in allusion to the works of the old masters) I have
succeeded in establishing the rules and principles of our art on