Could We Teach Taste Or

The Spectator, As He Walks The Gallery, Will Stop, Or Pass Along. To Give A General Air Of Grandeur At First View, All Trifling, Or Artful Play Of Little Lights, Or An Attention To A Variety Of Tints Is To Be Avoided; A Quietness And Simplicity Must Reign Over The Whole Work, To Which A Breadth Of Uniform And Simple Color Will Very Much Contribute.

No Art Can Be Grafted With Success On Another Art. For Though They All Profess The Same Origin, And To Proceed From The Same Stock, Yet Each Has Its Own Peculiar Modes Both Of Imitating Nature And Of Deviating From It... The Deviation, More Especially, Will Not Bear Transplantation To Another Soil.

Raphael And Titian Seem To Have Looked At Nature For Different Purposes; They Both Had The Power Of Extending Their View To The Whole; But One Looked Only For The General Effect As Produced By Form, The Other As Produced By Colour.

A Painter Must Not Only Be Of Necessity An Imitator Of The Works Of Nature... But He Must Be As Necessarily An Imitator Of The Works Of Other Painters. This Appears More Humiliating, But Is Equally True; And No Man Can Be An Artist, Whatever He May Suppose, Upon Any Other Terms.

I Wish You To Be Persuaded That Success In Your Art Depends Almost Entirely On Your Own Industry; But The Industry Which I Principally Recommend Is Not The Industry Of The Hands, But Of The Mind.