"Sir Joshua Reynolds" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pictures, presented by William Waldorf Astor in 1896. Paintings of importance are, in the main room, Munkacsy's Blind Milton Dictating "Paradise Lost" to his Daughters, Sir Henry Raeburn's Portrait of Lady Belhaven, Copley's Portrait of Lady Frances Wentworth, Turner's Scene on the French Coast, Sir Joshua Reynolds's Mrs. Billington as Saint Cecilia, Gilbert Stuart's Washington, Horace Vernet's Siege of Saragossa, Raeburn's Portrait of Van Brugh Livingston; in the Stuart Room, Boughton's Pilgrims Going to Church, Schreyer's The Attack, Inness's Hackensack ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... giving it a total breadth of one hundred and seventy feet. Hung in the two transepts respectively are the two great pictures by Rubens—the "Elevation of the Cross" and the "Descent from the Cross"—that are described at such length, and with so much critical enthusiasm, by Sir Joshua Reynolds in his "Journey to Flanders and Holland." The "Descent from the Cross," painted by Rubens in 1612, when he was only thirty-five years old, is perhaps the more splendid, and is specially remarkable for the daring with which the artist has successfully ventured ...
— Beautiful Europe - Belgium • Joseph E. Morris
... Ancient Marbles of the British Museum, by Taylor Combe; Mayer's Kunstgechicte; Cleghorn's Ancient and Modern Art; Wilkinson's Topography of Thebes; Dodwell's Classical Tour; Wilkinson's Ancient Egyptians; Flaxman's Lectures on Sculpture; Fuseli's Lectures; Sir Joshua Reynolds's Lectures; also see five articles on Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... the storm, which the wind was pelting against them. She drew 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 Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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, and ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... sight of it my companion paused, considered for a moment, and then, making a sudden 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 corpulent horses, driven by as corpulent a coachman, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... 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 ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... Covent-garden Churchyard; where Peter Pindar the other day followed him. In Leicester-square, on the site of Miss Linwood's exhibition and other houses, was the town mansion of the Sydneys, Earls of Leicester, and the family of Sir Philip and Algernon Sydney. In the same square lived Sir Joshua Reynolds. Dryden lived and died in Gerrard-street, in a house which looked backwards into the garden of Leicester House. Newton lived in St. Martin's-street, on the south side of the square. Steele lived in Bury-street, St. James'; he furnishes an illustrious precedent for the loungers in St. James'-street, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... 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: "Dr. ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Sir Joshua Reynolds ought to be called "the painter of little girls." No artist ever painted a larger number of little girls. And no artist ever knew better than he how to get the confidence ...
— The Children's Book of Celebrated Pictures • Lorinda Munson Bryant
... question 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 ...
— Essays on Art • A. Clutton-Brock
... 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.]
... numerous and so beautiful that it is difficult to imagine what many a chapel, hall, and library would be without them. They are of every date, from ancient fragments, such as may be seen in the windows of the Library at Trinity, to the great Sir Joshua Reynolds' window in New College Chapel, and the still later examples of Burne-Jones' art, which are among the chief beauties of the Cathedral; and they include such splendid instances of old Flemish art as may be found in Lincoln ...
— Oxford • Frederick Douglas How
... 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 of ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur
... important epoch; before the close of the century, almost all of those works had appeared which have had the greatest influence on more recent thinking. These works may be divided into four classes. Under the first, Philosophical Criticism, may be classed Burke's treatise "On the Sublime and Beautiful," Sir Joshua Reynolds's "Discourse on Painting," Campbell's "Philosophy of Rhetoric," Kames's "Elements of Criticism," Blair's "Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres," and Horne Tooke's ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... one in a better position for hearing the truth about Franklin than he was himself. He is there in September 1774, for he writes Cullen from town in that month, and speaks of having been for some time in it. He is there in January 1775, for on the 11th Bishop Percy met him at dinner at Sir Joshua Reynolds', along with Johnson, Burke, Gibbon, and others.[230] He is there in February, for a young friend, Patrick Clason, addresses a letter to him during that month to the care of Cadell, the bookseller, in the Strand. ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... impressively: "Now you will see our great treasure, the Brodie Vandyck, of which Flora has so often told you. I have never lent it for exhibition, for, as you know, we are rather superstitious about it. Sir Joshua Reynolds, in 1780, offered to paint the portraits of the whole family in exchange for the picture. Dr. Waagen describes it in his well-known work. Dr. Bode came from Berlin on purpose to see it some years ago, when he left a certificate (which was scarcely necessary) of its undoubted authenticity. I was ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... 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, and grace, and majesty of some of the figures; ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... already well filled with monuments of British worthies and heroes of this and the last century. Of men distinguished in Literature, Art, and Science, there are buried here Dr. Johnson, Hallam the historian, Sir Joshua Reynolds the painter, Turner the painter, Rennie the engineer who built Waterloo Bridge, Sir William Jones, the great Oriental scholar, and Sir Astley Cooper, the great surgeon. There is also buried here, as he ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... Sir Joshua Reynolds has given us a paraphrase of Raphael's painting of music's patron saint in his fine picture of Mrs. Billington, the famous English singer of his last years, as St. Cecilia. She holds a music book in her hand, but is listening to the carolling of some cherubs hovering above her. The ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... is colossal (though perhaps not much more so than the mountainous Doctor himself) and looks down upon the spectator from its pedestal of ten or twelve feet high, with a broad and heavy benignity of aspect, very like in feature to Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of Johnson, but calmer and sweeter in expression. Several big books are piled up beneath his chair, and, if I mistake not, he holds a volume in his hand, thus blinking forth at the world out of his learned abstraction, owllike, yet benevolent at heart. ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... beginning. Yesterday we were preeminently a word-civilization. England built her mediaeval cathedrals, but they left no legacy among craftsmen. Art had to lean on imported favorites like Van Dyck till the days of Sir Joshua Reynolds and the founding of the Royal Society. Consider that the friends of Reynolds were of the circle of Doctor Johnson. Literary tradition had grown old. Then England had her beginning of landscape gardening. Later she saw the rise of Constable, ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay
... Several notable artists, Sir Joshua Reynolds among them, have complimented the picture by taking the horse, background and pose, and placing another man in the saddle—or more properly, taking off the head of Charles the First and putting on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... top of Break Neck Steps and Turn Again Lane—I remember them all well, and the Fleet prison walls too, when I was a boy—and in refuge at Canonbury Tower, near the village of Islington, these are the places where Goldsmith wrote for children. Sir Joshua Reynolds tells how, when he called on the poet at Green Arbour Court, he found ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... cost the noble owner upwards of 60,000L. The structure has been more than once extensively injured by fire. A conflagration there in October, 1816, consumed a large portion of the ancient part of the castle, and several of the pictures. Among them was Sir Joshua Reynolds's Nativity, a composition of thirteen figures, and in dimensions 12 feet by 18. This noble picture was purchased by the late Duke ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 564, September 1, 1832 • Various
... Banks stood for science, and three other names show the growing respect for art. The amiable Dr. Burney was a musician who had raised the standard of his calling; Garrick had still more conspicuously gained social respect for the profession of actor; and Sir Joshua Reynolds was the representative of the English school of painters, whose works still impress upon us the beauty of our great-grandmothers and the charm of their children, and suggest the existence of a really dignified and pure domestic life in a class too often remembered by the reckless ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... a stomach capacious as a city alderman in doing honour to the feast; pretends to be a connoisseur in wines, although he never possessed above one bottle at a time in his cellaret, I should think, in the whole course of his life; talks about works of art and virtu as if Sir Joshua Reynolds had been his nurse—Claude his intimate acquaintance—or Praxiteles his great great grandfather. The fellow affects a most dignified contempt for the canaille, because, in truth, they never invite him to ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... Napoleon—through all Washington's, Adams's, Jefferson's, Madison's, and Monroe's Presidentiads—amid so many flashing lists of names, (indeed there seems hardly, in any department, any end to them, Old World or New,) Franklin, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Mirabeau, Fox, Nelson, Paul Jones, Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, Fulton, Walter Scott, Byron, Mesmer, Champollion—Amid pictures that dart upon me even as I speak, and glow and mix and coruscate and fade like aurora boreales—Louis the 16th threaten'd ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... 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. Burney ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... 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 basrelief, and which Sir Joshua Reynolds ought not ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... was Mrs Billington, the famous singer, whom Michael Kelly describes as "an angel of beauty and the Saint Cecilia of song." There is no more familiar anecdote than that which connects Haydn with Sir Joshua Reynolds's portrait of this notorious character. Carpani is responsible for the tale. He says that Haydn one day found Mrs Billington sitting to Reynolds, who was painting her as St Cecilia listening to the angels. "It is like," said Haydn, "but ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... tavern, the Fox 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 ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... specify or emphasise a few chefs d'oeuvre, such as Hogarth's Prints in the first or best states, Turner's Liber Studiorum, Sir Joshua Reynolds' Graphic Works, and Lodge's Portraits. But we are neither so wealthy nor so advanced as our French and German neighbours in this direction, and the former may be affirmed to stand alone in the possession of a class of books with engravings germane to the national genius ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... the first principles of art in our national historical pictures. Yet was the great historical the whole subject of the Discourses—it was to be the only worthy aim of the student. If the advice and precepts of Sir Joshua Reynolds have, then, been so entirely disregarded, it may be asked what benefit he has conferred upon the world by his Discourses. We answer, great. He has shown what should be the aim of art, and has therefore raised it in the estimation of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... 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 is true I would ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... octaves, from A to A, with flute-like upper tones. She sang with neatness, agility and precision, could detect the least false intonation of instrument or voice, and was attractive in appearance. Haydn eulogized her genius in his diary, and in the studio of Sir Joshua Reynolds, who was painting her portrait as St. Cecilia, exclaimed: "You have represented Mrs. Billington listening to the angels, you should have made them listening to her." It was she who introduced Mozart's operas into England. She only lived to ...
— For Every Music Lover - A Series of Practical Essays on Music • Aubertine Woodward Moore |
