




Transcribed from the 1901 Cassell and Company edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk.  Proofing by David, Dawn Smith, Uzma, Jane
Foster, Juliana Rew, Marie Rhoden and Jo Osment.





SEVEN DISCOURSES ON ART
by Joshua Reyonds


INTRODUCTION


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 of thought, be applied to
Literature or to any exercise of the best powers of mind for shaping the
delights that raise us to the larger sense of life.  In his separation of
the utterance of whole truths 