very flattering to me, as it implies your approbation of the method of
study which I have recommended; but likewise, as this method receives
from that act such an additional weight and authority, as demands from
the Students that deference and respect which can be due only to the
united sense of so considerable a BODY OF ARTISTS.
I am,
With the greatest esteem and respect,
GENTLEMEN,
Your most humble,
And obedient Servant,
JOSHUA REYNOLDS.
DISCOURSES.
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS' DISCOURSES.
DISCOURSE I.
_Delivered at the Opening of the Royal Academy, January 2, 1769._
THE ADVANTAGES PROCEEDING FROM THE INSTITUTION OF A ROYAL
ACADEMY.--HINTS OFFERED TO THE CONSIDERATION OF THE PROFESSORS AND
VISITORS.--THAT AN IMPLICIT OBEDIENCE TO THE RULES OF ART BE
EXACTED FROM THE YOUNG STUDENTS.--THAT A PREMATURE DISPOSITION TO
A MASTERLY DEXTERITY BE REPRESSED.--THAT DILIGENCE BE CONSTANTLY
RECOMMENDED, AND (THAT IT MAY BE EFFECTUAL) DIRECTED TO ITS PROPER
OBJECT.
An Academy, in which the Polite Arts may be regularly cultivated, is
at last opened among us by Royal munificence. This must appear an
event in the highest degree interesting, not only to the Artist, but
to the whole nation.
It is, indeed, difficult to give any other reason why an empire like
that of Britain should so long have wanted an ornament so suitable to
its greatness, than that slow progression of things, which naturally
makes elegance and refinement the last effect of opulence and power.
An Institution like this has often been recommended upon
considerations merely mercantile; but an Academy, founded upon such
principles, can never effect even its own narrow purposes. If it has
an origin no higher, no taste can ever be formed in manufactures; but
if the higher Arts of Design flourish, these inferior ends will be
answered of course.
We are happy in having a Prince who has conceived the design of such
an Institution, according to its true dignity; and who promotes the
Arts, as the head of a great, a learned, a polite, and a commercial
nation; and I can now congratulate you, Gentlemen, on the
accomplishment of your long and ardent wishes.
The numberless and ineffectual consultations which I have had with many
in this assembly to form plans and concert schemes for an Academy,
afford a sufficient proof of the impossibility of succeeding but by the
influence of Majesty. But there have, perhaps, been times when even the
influence of Majesty would have been ineffectual; and it is pleasing to
reflect, that we are thus embodied, when every circumstance seems to
concur from which honour and prosperity can probably arise.
There are, at this time, a greater number of excellent artists than were
ever known before at one period in this nation; there is a general
desire among our Nobility to be distinguished as lovers and judges of
the Arts; there is a greater superfluity of wealth among the people to
reward the professors; and, above all, we are patronised by a Monarch,
who, knowing the value of science and of elegance, thinks every art
worthy of his notice, that tends to soften and humanise the mind.
After so much has been done by His Majesty, it will be wholly our
fault if our progress is not in some degree correspondent to the
wisdom and generosity of the Institution: let us show our gratitude in
our diligence, that, though our merit may not answer his expectations,
yet, at least, our industry may deserve his protection.
But whatever may be our proportion of success, of this we may be sure,
that the present Institution will at least contribute to advance our
knowledge of the Arts, and bring us nearer to that ideal excellence,
which it is the lot of genius always to contemplate, and never to
attain.
The principal advantage of an Academy is, that, besides furnishing
able men to direct the Student, it will be a repository for the great
examples of the Art. These are the materials on which Genius is to
work, and without which the strongest intellect may be fruitlessly or
deviously employed. By studying these authentic models, that idea of
excellence which is the result of the accumulated experience of past
ages may be at once acquired; and the tardy and obstructed progress of
our predecessors may teach us a shorter and easier way. The Student
receives, at one glance, the principles which many Artists have spent
their whole lives in ascertaining; and, satisfied with their effect,
is spared the painful investigation by which they came to be known and
fixed. How many men of great natural abilities have been lost to this
nation for want of these advantages! They never had an opportunity of
seeing those masterly efforts of genius, which at once kindle the
whole soul, and force it into sudden and irresistible approbation.
Raffaelle, it is true, had not the advantage of studying in an Academy;
but all Rome, and the works of Michel Angelo in particular, were to him
an Academy. On the sight of the Capella Sistina, he immediately, from a
dry, Gothic, and even insipid manner, which attends to the minute
accidental discriminations of particular and individual objects, assumed
that grand style of painting, which improves partial representation by
the general and invariable ideas of nature.
Every seminary of learning may be said to be surrounded with an
atmosphere of floating knowledge, where every mind may imbibe somewhat
congenial to its own original conceptions. Knowledge, thus obtained,
has always something more popular and useful than that which is forced
upon the mind by private precepts or solitary meditation. Besides, it
is generally found, that a youth more easily receives instruction from
the companions of his studies, whose minds are nearly on a level with
his own, than from those who are much his superiors; and it is from
his equals only that he catches the fire of emulation.
One advantage, I will venture to affirm, we shall have in our Academy,
which no other nation can boast. We shall have nothing to unlearn. To
this praise the present race of Artists have a just claim. As far as
they have yet proceeded, they are right. With us the exertions of
genius will henceforward be directed to their proper objects. It will
not be as it has been in other schools, where he that travelled
fastest only wandered farthest from the right way.
Impressed, as I am, therefore, with such a favourable opinion of my
associates, in this undertaking, it would ill become me to dictate to
any of them. But as these Institutions have so often failed in other
nations; and as it is natural to think with regret how much might have
been done, I must take leave to offer a few hints, by which those
errors may be rectified, and those defects supplied. These the
Professors and Visitors may reject or adopt as they shall think proper.
I would chiefly recommend that an implicit obedience to the _Rules of
Art_, as established by the practice of the great MASTERS, should be
exacted from the _young_ Students. That those models, which have
passed through the approbation of ages, should be considered by them
as perfect and infallible guides; as subjects for their imitation,
not their criticism.
I am confident that this is the only efficacious method of making a
progress in the Arts; and that he who sets out with doubting, will
find life finished before he becomes master of the rudiments. For it
may be laid down as a maxim, that he who begins by presuming on his
own sense, has ended his studies as soon as he has commenced them.
Every opportunity, therefore, should be taken to discountenance that
false and vulgar opinion, that rules are the fetters of genius: they
are fetters only to men of no genius; as that armour, which upon the
strong is an ornament and a defence, upon the weak and misshapen
becomes a load, and cripples the body which it was made to protect.
How much liberty may be taken to break through those rules, and, as
the poet expresses it,
"To snatch a grace beyond the reach of art,"
may be a subsequent consideration, when the pupils become masters
themselves. It is then, when their genius has received its utmost
improvement, that rules may possibly be dispensed with. But let us not
destroy the scaffold until we have raised the building.
The Directors ought more particularly to watch over the genius of
those Students, who, being more advanced, are arrived at that critical
period of study, on the nice management of which their future turn of
taste depends. At that age it is natural for them to be more
captivated with what is brilliant than with what is solid, and to
prefer splendid negligence to painful and humiliating exactness.
A facility in composing, a lively, and what is called a masterly,
handling of the chalk or pencil, are, it must be confessed,
captivating qualities to young minds, and become, of course, the
objects of their ambition. They endeavour to imitate these dazzling
excellencies, which they will find no great labour in attaining. After
much time spent in these frivolous pursuits, the difficulty will be to
retreat; but it will be then too late; and there is scarce an instance
of return to scrupulous labour, after the mind has been debauched and
deceived by this fallacious mastery.
By this useless industry they are excluded from all power of advancing
in real excellence. Whilst boys, they are arrived at their utmost
perfection: they have taken the shadow for the substance; and make the
mechanical felicity the chief excellence of the art, which is only an
ornament, and of the merit of which few but painters themselves are
judges.
This seems to me to be one of the most dangerous sources of
corruption; and I speak of it from experience, not as an error which
may possibly happen, but which has actually infected all foreign
Academies. The directors were probably pleased with this premature
dexterity in their pupils, and praised their despatch at the expense
of their correctness.
But young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought
masters of execution inciting them on one hand, but also their natural
sloth tempting them on the other. They are terrified at the prospect
before them of the toil required to attain exactness. The impetuosity
of youth is disgusted at the slow approaches of a regular siege, and
desires, from mere impatience of labour, to take the citadel by storm.
They wish to find some shorter path to excellence, and hope to obtain
the reward of eminence by other means than those which the
indispensable rules of art have prescribed. They must, therefore, be
told again and again, that labour is the only price of solid fame,
and that whatever their force of genius may be, there is no easy
method of becoming a good Painter.
When we read the lives of the most eminent Painters, every page
informs us that no part of their time was spent in dissipation. Even
an increase of fame served only to augment their industry. To be
convinced with what persevering assiduity they pursued their studies,
we need only reflect on their method of proceeding in their most
celebrated works. When they conceived a subject, they first made a
variety of sketches; then a finished drawing of the whole; after that
a more correct drawing of every separate part--heads, hands, feet, and
pieces of drapery; they then painted the picture, and after all,
retouched it from the life. The pictures, thus wrought with such
pains, now appear like the effect of enchantment, and as if some
mighty genius had struck them off at a blow.
But, whilst diligence is thus recommended to the Students, the
Visitors will take care that their diligence be effectual; that it be
well directed, and employed on the proper object. A Student is not
always advancing because he is employed; he must apply his strength to
that part of the art where the real difficulties lie; to that part
which distinguishes it as a liberal art; and not by mistaken industry
lose his time in that which is merely ornamental. The Students,
instead of vying with each other which shall have the readiest hand,
should be taught to contend who shall have the purest and most correct
outline; instead of striving which shall produce the brightest tint,
or curiously trifling, shall give the gloss of stuffs, so as to appear
real, let their ambition be directed to contend which shall dispose
his drapery in the most graceful folds, which shall give the most
grace and dignity to the human figure.
I must beg leave to submit one thing more to the consideration of the
Visitors, which appears to me a matter of very great consequence, and
the omission of which I think a principal defect in the method of
education pursued in all the Academies I have ever visited. The error
I mean is, that the Students never draw exactly from the living models
which they have before them. It is not, indeed, their intention, nor
are they directed to do it. Their drawings resemble the model only in
the attitude. They change the form according to their vague and
uncertain ideas of beauty, and make a drawing rather of what they
think the figure ought to be, than of what it appears. I have thought
this the obstacle that has stopped the progress of many young men of
real genius; and I very much doubt whether a habit of drawing
correctly what we see will not give a proportionable power of drawing
correctly what we imagine. He who endeavours to copy nicely the figure
before him, not only acquires a habit of exactness and precision, but
is continually advancing in his knowledge of the human figure; and
though he seems to superficial observers to make a slower progress, he
will be found at last capable of adding (without running into
capricious wildness) that grace and beauty which is necessary to be
given to his more finished works, and which cannot be got by the
moderns, as it was not acquired by the ancients, but by an attentive
and well-compared study of the human form.
What I think ought to enforce this method is, that it has been the
practice (as may be seen by their drawings) of the great Masters in
the Art. I will mention a drawing of Raffaelle, _The Dispute of the
Sacrament_, the print of which, by Count Cailus, is in every hand. It
appears that he made his sketch from one model; and the habit he had
of drawing exactly from the form before him appears by his making all
the figures with the same cap, such as his model then happened to
wear; so servile a copyist was this great man, even at a time when he
was allowed to be at his highest pitch of excellence.
I have seen also Academy figures by Annibale Caracci, though he was
often sufficiently licentious in his finished works, drawn with all
the peculiarities of an individual model.
This scrupulous exactness is so contrary to the practice of the
Academies, that it is not without great deference that I beg leave to
recommend it to the consideration of the Visitors; and submit to them,
whether the neglect of this method is not one of the reasons why
Students so often disappoint expectation, and, being more than boys at
sixteen, become less than men at thirty.
In short, the method I recommend can only be detrimental where there are
but few living forms to copy; for then Students, by always drawing from
one alone, will by habit be taught to overlook defects, and mistake
deformity for beauty. But of this there is no danger, since the Council
has determined to supply the Academy with a variety of subjects; and
indeed those laws which they have drawn up, and which the Secretary will
presently read for your confirmation, have in some measure precluded me
from saying more upon this occasion. Instead, therefore, of offering my
advice, permit me to indulge my wishes, and express my hope, that this
Institution may answer the expectation of its ROYAL FOUNDER; that the
present age may vie in Arts with that of LEO the Tenth; and that _the
dignity of the dying Art_ (to make use of an expression of Pliny) may be
revived under the Reign of GEORGE THE THIRD.
DISCOURSE II.
_Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy, on the Distribution
of the Prizes, December 11, 1769._
THE COURSE AND ORDER OF STUDY.--THE DIFFERENT STAGES OF ART.--MUCH
COPYING DISCOUNTENANCED.--THE ARTIST AT ALL TIMES AND IN ALL
PLACES SHOULD BE EMPLOYED IN LAYING UP MATERIALS FOR THE EXERCISE
OF HIS ART.
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 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 for 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 been known and done before
his own time. 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 most 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 teachers; and as exercising a
sort of sovereignty over those rules which have hitherto restrained him.
Comparing now no longer the performances of Art with each other, but
examining the Art itself by the standard of nature, he corrects what is
erroneous, supplies what is scanty, and adds by his own observation what
the industry of his predecessors may have yet left wanting to
perfection. Having well established his judgment, and stored his memory,
he may now without fear try the power of his imagination. The mind that
has been thus disciplined may be indulged in the warmest enthusiasm, and
venture to play on the borders of the wildest extravagance. The habitual
dignity which long converse with the greatest minds has imparted to him
will display itself in all his attempts; and he will stand among his
instructors, not as an imitator, but a rival.
These are the different stages of the Art. But as I now address myself
particularly to those Students who have been this day rewarded for
their happy passage through the first period, I can with no propriety
suppose they want any help in the initiatory studies. My present
design is to direct your view to distant excellence, and to show you
the readiest path that leads to it. Of this I shall speak with such
latitude, as may leave the province of the professor uninvaded; and
shall not anticipate those precepts, which it is his business to give,
and your duty to understand.
It is indisputably evident that a great part of every man's life must
be employed in collecting materials for the exercise of genius.
Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of
those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the
memory: nothing can come of nothing: he who has laid up no materials
can produce no combinations.
A Student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is
always apt to overrate his own abilities; to mistake the most trifling
excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new to him for a
new-found country. If by chance he passes beyond his usual limits, he
congratulates his own arrival at those regions which they who have
steered a better course have long left behind them.
The productions of such minds are seldom distinguished by an air of
originality: they are anticipated in their happiest efforts; and if
they are found to differ in any thing from their predecessors, it is
only in irregular sallies and trifling conceits. The more extensive,
therefore, your acquaintance is with the works of those who have
excelled, the more extensive will be your powers of invention; and
what may appear still more like a paradox, the more original will be
your conceptions. But the difficulty on this occasion is to determine
what ought to be proposed as models of excellence, and who ought to
be considered as the properest guides.
To a young man just arrived in Italy, many of the present painters of
that country are ready enough to obtrude their precepts, and to offer
their own performances as examples of that perfection which they
affect to recommend. The modern, however, who recommends himself as a
standard, may justly be suspected as ignorant of the true end, and
unacquainted with the proper object, of the art which he professes. To
follow such a guide will not only retard the Student, but mislead him.
On whom, then, can he rely, or who shall show him the path that leads to
excellence? The answer is obvious: those great masters who have
travelled the same road with success are the most likely to conduct
others. The works of those who have stood the test of ages have a claim
to that respect and veneration to which no modern can pretend. The
duration and stability of their fame is sufficient to evince that it has
not been suspended upon the slender thread of fashion and caprice, but
bound to the human heart by every tie of sympathetic approbation.
There is no danger of studying too much the works of those great men:
but how they may be studied to advantage is an inquiry of great
importance.