Date: December 11, 1786; 1787

"A man endowed with this faculty, feels and acknowledges the truth, though it is not always in his power, perhaps, to give a reason for it; because he cannot recollect and bring present before him all the materials that gave birth to his opinion; for very many and very intricate considerations, m...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 11, 1786; 1787

"If this be not done, the Artist may happen to impose on himself by partial reasoning, by a cold consideration of those animated first thoughts which proceeded, not perhaps from caprice or rashness (as he may afterwards conceit) but from the fullness of his mind, enriched with all the copious sto...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 11, 1786; 1787

"A landskip thus conducted, under the influence of a Poetical mind, will have the same superiority over the more ordinary and common views, as Milton's Allegro and Penseroso have over a cold prosaic narration or description; and such a Picture would make a more forcible impression on the mind tha...

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)

Date: December 11, 1786; 1787

"Because these Arts, in their highest province, are not addressed to the gross senses, but to the desires of the mind, to that spark of divinity which we have within, impatient of being circumscribed and pent up by the world which is about us."

— Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792)