Jonathan Richardson

Jonathan Richardson (1665 – 1745), sometimes called "the Elder" to distinguish him from his son, was an English artist, collector of drawings, and writer on art, working almost entirely as a portrait-painter in London

Essay on the Theory of Painting (1725)

 * Jonathan Richardson (1725), Essay on the Theory of Painting, London


 * In picture we never die,never decay or grow older


 * Painting is that pleasant amusement being one of the means whereby we convey ideas to each other.


 * The pleasure that painting as a dumb art give us, is like what we have from misic, its beautiful forms, vlour and harmony are to the eye what sounds and the harmony are to the ear.


 * Words paint to the imagination but every man forms the thing to himself in his own way.
 * The theatre gives us representations of things, and there we see a sort of moving, speaking pictures but they are transient whereas painting remains and is always at hand.