Description

This two-volume posthumous edition of the writings on art of Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), one of the greatest of eighteenth-century artists and the first president of the Royal Academy, was published in 1797. Volume 1, prefaced by a short biography of Reynolds by his friend, the Shakespearean critic Edmond Malone (1741-1812), consists of his 'discourses' on art given at the Royal Academy, and three essays published in Dr Johnson's periodical The Idler. Volume 2 contains his previously unpublished Journey to Flanders and Holland, which describes and comments on the paintings Reynolds examined on a two-month tour in Europe in 1781, and an extensive commentary by Reynolds on a poem on the art of painting by Charles Alphonse du Fresnoy (1611-68). Appendices include essays by Pope and Dryden on Du Fresnoy's poem, and chronological and alphabetical lists of painters and their genres. An index covers both volumes.