ABSTRACT
The two chief points which Sir Joshua Reynolds aims at in his Discourses are to shew that excellence in the Fine Arts is the result of pains and study, rather than of genius, and that all beauty, grace and grandeur are to be found, not in actual nature, but in an idea existing in the mind. On both these points he appears to have fallen into considerable inconsistencies. This chapter brings together several passages that from their contradictory import seem to imply some radical defect in Sir Joshua's theory, and a doubt as to the possibility of placing an implicit reliance on his authority. He tells us the names of the painters who formed themselves upon Masaccio's style: he does not tell us on whom he formed himself. Sir Joshua, in another part of his work, endeavours to reconcile and prop up contradictions by a paradoxical sophism which the author thinks to turn upon himself.
