A Mere Copier Of Nature

Nothing Can Come Of Nothing; He Who Has Laid Up No Materials Can Produce No Combinations.

What Has Pleased And Continues To Please, Is Likely To Please Again; Hence Are Derived The Rules Of Art, And On This Immovable Foundation They Must Ever Stand.

The First Degree Of Proficiency Is, In Painting, What Grammar Is In Literature, A General Preparation For Whatever The Student May Afterward Choose For More Particular Application. The Power Of Drawing, Modeling, And Using Colors, Is Very Properly Called The Language Of The Art.

Grandeur Of Effect Is Produced By Two Different Ways Which Seem Entirely Opposed To Each Other. One Is By Reducing The Colors To Little More Than Chiaroscuro... And The Other, By Making The Colors Very Distinct And Forcible... But Still, The Presiding Principle Of Both Those Manners Is Simplicity.

The General Ideas Which Are Expressed In Sketches, Correspond Very Well To The Art Often Used In Poetry... Every Reader Making Out The Detail According To His Own Particular Imagination... But A Painter, When He Represents Eve On Canvas, Is Obliged To Give A Determined Form, And His Own Idea Of Beauty Distinctly Expressed.