Read.

Reynolds, Samuel Johnson, n/d

I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.

Samuel Johnson from Johnsonian Miscellanies, Vol. II

Happy Birthday, Sir Joshua

Reynolds, Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1769

In the practice of art... it is necessary to keep a watchful and jealous eye over ourselves; idleness, assuming the specious disguise of industry... may be employed to evade and shuffle off real labor - the real labor of thinking.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, born on this day in 1723, from Discourses

Happy Birthday, Reynolds

Reynolds, Colonel Tarleton, 1782

In the practice of art it is necessary to keep a watchful and jealous eye over ourselves; idleness, assuming the specious disguise of industry may be employed to evade and shuffle off real labor -- the real labor of thinking.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, born on this day in 1723

Laudable.

Reynolds, Samuel Johnson, 1769

Some degree of self-approbation is always the reward of diligence; and I cannot, therefore, but consider the laborious cultivation of petty pleasures, as a more happy and more virtuous disposition, than that universal contempt and haughty negligence, which is sometimes associated with powerful faculties, but is often assumed by indolence when it disowns its name, and aspires to the appellation of greatness of mind.

It has been long observed, that drollery and ridicule is the most easy kind of wit: let it be added that contempt and arrogance is the easiest philosophy. To find some objection to every thing, and to dissolve in perpetual laziness under pretense that occasions are wanting to call forth activity, to laugh at those who are ridiculously busy without setting an example of more rational industry, is no less in the power of the meanest than of the highest intellects.

Our present state has placed us at once in such different relations, that every human employment, which is not a visible and immediate act of goodness, will be in some respect or other subject to contempt; but it is true, likewise, that almost every act, which is not directly vicious, is in some respect beneficial and laudable. "I often," says Bruyere, "observe from my window, two beings of erect form and amiable countenance, endowed with the powers of reason, able to clothe their thoughts in language, and convey their notions to each other. They rise early in the morning, and are every day employed till sunset in rubbing two smooth stones together, or, in other terms, in polishing marble."

Samuel Johnson, from The Adventurer

Accuracy.

Reynolds, Self Portrait, 1749

Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking.

Wallace Stevens

Search.

Constable, Cenotaph to the Memory of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1836

The search for perfection is a subtle drug. It draws the mind along circuitous routes, deeper and deeper into itself, until nothing can be seen except the ideal. Desire blinds one to purpose, and thus renders true perfection impossible.

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Perfection, thankfully, is impossible.

Through.

Reynolds, Theory, 1780

You cannot go on "explaining away" for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on "seeing through" things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it.

C.S. Lewis,  from The Abolition of Man

Strength.

Reynolds, Dr. Samuel Johnson, 1769

We feared pain much earlier than we apprehended guilt, and were delighted with the sensations of pleasure, before we had capacities to be charmed with the beauty of rectitude. To this power, thus early established, and incessantly increasing, it must be remembered that almost every man has, in some part of his life, added new strength by a voluntary or negligent subjection of himself; for who is there that has not instigated his appetites by indulgence, or suffered them, by an unresisting neutrality, to enlarge their dominion, and multiply their demands?

Samuel Johnson

Happy Birthday, Reynolds

Reynolds, Self-Portrait, 1780

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 be made of nothing: he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, born on this day in 1723, from Seven Discourses on Art

Instead.

Reynolds, Dusk, the Outbuildings, 1957

NOVEMBER, LATE in the DAY

So this is aging: the bare sun, skinned,

palely bucking the dark wind,

slides through the glass, crawls on the carpet,

climbs the footboard, lies crosswise on the blanket,

a spoiled dog waiting to be fed.

Not now, dear warmth. The kindling’s in the shed,

too far to fetch. Those two great logs that close

together to make fire, repose

apart, an old couple reminiscing

on conflagrations they’re now missing:

how every sunny Saturday afternoon,

Hey, diddle-diddle, the dish ran away with the spoon.

Not yet, dear spoon. Some hotter day, dear dish.

No tidbits now. Instead, let’s make a wish,

and boil fresh water for the small teapot

to keep it piping hot.

John M. Ridland

Happy Birthday, Johnson

Reynolds, Samuel Johnson, 1756 

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove. 

 Dr. Samuel Johnson, born on this day in 1709

Be.

Reynolds, Self-Portrait, 1780

Could we teach taste and genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius. 

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Happy Birthday, Reynolds

Reynolds, Self-Portrait, 1749

Young men have not only this frivolous ambition of being thought masters of execution, inciting them on the 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.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, born on this day in 1733

Happy Birthday, Johnson

Reynolds, Samuel Johnson, 1756

Samuel Johnson was born on this day in 1709.

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove.

Samuel Johnson

Happy Birthday, Reynolds

Reynolds, Self-Portrait, 1773

Sir Joshua Reynolds was born on this day in 1723.

Command.

To learn to see- to accustom the eye to calmness, to patience, and to allow things to come up to it; to defer judgment, and to acquire the habit of approaching and grasping an individual case from all sides.

This is the first preparatory schooling of intellectuality.

One must not respond immediately to a stimulus; one must acquire a command of the obstructing and isolating instincts.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Top:  Rembrandt, Self-portrait, 1628

Middleman: Reynolds, Self-portrait, 1749

Bottom: Richmond, Self-portrait, 1840

Thank you, Kurt.

Happy Birthday, Reynolds

Reynolds, Self-portrait, 1804

Sir Joshua Reynolds was born on this date in 1723.

Our studies will be forever, in a very great degree, under the direction of chance; like travelers, we must take what we can get, and when we can get it – whether it is or is not administered to us in the most commodious manner, in the most proper place, or at the exact minute when we would wish to have it.

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Considerable.

Reynolds, Self-portrait, 1749

Our studies will be forever, in a very great degree, under the direction of chance; like travelers, we must take what we can get, and when we can get it – whether it is or is not administered to us in the most commodious manner, in the most proper place, or at the exact minute when we would wish to have it.

By leaving a student to himself he may be led to undertake matters above his strength, but the trial will at least have this advantage: it will discover to himself his own deficiencies and this discovery alone is a very considerable acquisition.

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Open.

Reynolds, Self-portrait, 1745

The world was so beautiful when regarded like this, without searching, so simply, in such a childlike way. Moons and stars were beautiful, beautiful were bank and stream, forest and rocks, goat and gold-bug, flower and butterfly. So lovely, so delightful to go through the world this way, so like a child, awake, open to what is near, without distrust.

Herman Hesse

Happy Birthday, Reynolds

Reynolds, Self-portrait, 1788

Joshua Reynolds was born on this date in 1723.

Our studies will be forever, in a very great degree, under the direction of chance; like travelers, we must take what we can get, and when we can get it – whether it is or is not administered to us in the most commodious manner, in the most proper place, or at the exact minute when we would wish to have it.  By leaving a student to himself he may be led to undertake matters above his strength, but the trial will at least have this advantage: it will discover to himself his own deficiencies and this discovery alone is a very considerable acquisition.

Joshua Reynolds