analysis

ARTS 1A: Document Analysis 3

Joshua Reynolds

Read the following excerpt from a primary source document, and address the questions which

follow in your notebook.

Excerpts from a speech by Joshua Reynolds, “A DISCOURSE: Delivered to the Students of

the Royal Academy, on the Distribution of the Prizes, December 11, 1769, by the President.”

. . . Dividing the study of painting into three distinct periods, I shall address you as having passed

through the first of them, which is confined to the rudiments, including a facility of drawing any

object that presents itself, a tolerable readiness in the management of colours, and an

acquaintance with the most simple and obvious rules of composition. . . .

When the artist is once enabled to express himself with some degree of correctness, he must then

endeavour to collect subjects for expression; to amass a stock of ideas, to be combined and

varied as occasion may require. He is now in the second period of study, in which his business is

to learn all that has hitherto been known and done. Having hitherto received instructions from a

particular master, he is now to consider the art itself as his master. . . . This period is, however,

still a time of subjection and discipline. Though the student will not resign himself blindly to any

single authority when he may have the advantage of consulting many, he must still be afraid of

trusting his own judgment, and of deviating into any track where he cannot find the footsteps of

some former master.

The third and last period emancipates the student from subjection to any authority but what he

shall himself judge to be supported by reason. Confiding now in his own judgment, he will

consider and separate those different principles to which different modes of beauty owe their

original. In the former period he sought only to know and combine excellence, wherever it was

to be found, into one idea of perfection; in this he learns, what requires the most attentive survey

and the subtle disquisition, to discriminate perfections that are incompatible with each other.

He is from this time to regard himself as holding the same rank with those masters whom he

before obeyed as teachers, and as exercising a sort of sovereignty over those rules which have

hitherto restrained him. Comparing now no longer the performances of art with each other, but

examining the art itself by the standard of nature, he corrects what is erroneous, supplies what is

scanty, and adds by his own observation what the industry of his predecessors may have yet left

wanting to perfection. Having well established his judgment, and stored his memory, he may

now without fear try the power of his imagination. The mind that has been thus disciplined may

be indulged in the warmest enthusiasm, and venture to play on the borders of the wildest

extravagance. The habitual dignity, which long converse with the greatest minds has imparted to

him, will display itself in all his attempts, and he will stand among his instructors, not as an

imitator, but a rival.

* * *

In your notebook, write a response to each of the following questions. As part of each your

response, practice quoting from this document—that is, literally place “quotation” marks around

something that is stated, as part of your answer to each question.

After completing your written responses to the questions below, keep them in your notes

portfolio, to use during this week’s quiz, as well subsequent exams and the analysis paper.

1. In your own words, describe the “rudiments” of art, as noted by Reynolds in the first paragraph.

2. In the second paragraph, Reynolds urges students to “collect subjects”. What kinds of subjects you think Reynolds would find worthy of representation in an art academy? And

what subject categories would he find unworthy?

3. After art students completed the third stage of their work at the academy, Reynolds believed they should evaluate their work by which standard? See especially the fourth

paragraph.

* * *