Essays

Gentlemen,—When I have taken the liberty of addressing you on the course and order of your studies, I never proposed to enter into a minute detail of the art.  This I have always left to the several professors, who pursue the end of our institution with the highest honour to themselves, and with the greatest advantage to the students.

Gentlemen,—It has been my uniform endeavour, since I first addressed you from this place, to impress you strongly with one ruling idea.  I wished you to be persuaded, that success in your art depends almost entirely on your own industry; but the industry which I principally recommended, is not the industry of the hands, but of themind.

by Joshua Reyonds

It is a happy memory that associates the foundation of our Royal Academy with the delivery of these inaugural discourses by Sir Joshua Reynolds, on the opening of the schools, and at the first annual meetings for the distribution of its prizes.  They laid down principles of art from the point of view of a man of genius who had made his power felt, and with the clear good sense which is the foundation of all work that looks upward and may hope to live.  The truths here expressed concerning Art may, with slight adjustment of the way