Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses: Edited, with an Introduction, by Helen ZimmernReynolds, Joshua, Sir
General
Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses: Edited, with an Introduction, by Helen Zimmern
Reynolds, Joshua, Sir
Art
I have strongly inculcated in my former Discourses, as I do in this,
my last, the wisdom and necessity of previously obtaining the
appropriated instruments of the Art, in a first correct design, and a
plain manly colouring before anything more is attempted. But by this I
would not wish to cramp and fetter the mind, or discourage those who
follow (as most of us may at one time have followed) the suggestion of
a strong inclination: something must be conceded to great and
irresistible impulses: perhaps every Student must not be strictly
bound to general methods, if they strongly thwart the peculiar turn of
his own mind. I must confess that it is not absolutely of much
consequence whether he proceeds in the general method of seeking first
to acquire mechanical accuracy, before he attempts poetical flights,
provided he diligently studies to attain the full perfection of the
style he pursues; whether, like Parmegiano, he endeavours at grace and
grandeur of manner before he has learned correctness of drawing, if
like him he feels his own wants, and will labour, as that eminent
artist did, to supply those wants; whether he starts from the East or
from the West, if he relaxes in no exertion to arrive ultimately at
the same goal. The first public work of Parmegiano is the St.
Eustachius, in the church of St. Petronius in Bologna, and was done
when he was a boy; and one of the last of his works is the Moses
breaking the tables in Parma. In the former there is certainly
something of grandeur in the outline, or in the conception of the
figure, which discovers the dawnings of future greatness; of a young
mind impregnated with the sublimity of Michel Angelo, whose style he
here attempts to imitate, though he could not then draw the human
figure with any common degree of correctness. But this same
Parmegiano, when in his more mature age he painted the Moses, had so
completely supplied his first defects, that we are here at a loss
which to admire most, the correctness of drawing or the grandeur of
the conception. As a confirmation of its great excellence, and of the
impression which it leaves on the minds of elegant spectators, I may
observe, that our great Lyric Poet, when he conceived his sublime idea
of the indignant Welsh Bard, acknowledged, that though many years had
intervened, he had warmed his imagination with the remembrance of this
noble figure of Parmegiano.
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