Reynolds on the education proper to an artist

Another way of putting the point that education in the early Modern period is essentially to do with adjusting habits is to say, as we have seen Locke say, that its role is to inculcate appropriate rules of behaviour. Locke was discussing the general education of children. But the same way of thinking is there in the 18th Century approach to the much more specialised education of the artist.

Here is the teaching and learning strategy of Sir Joshua Reynolds for example:

'I would chiefly recommend, that an implicit obedience to the Rules of Art, as established by the practice of the great MASTERS, should be exacted from the young students.' (Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses, (First published 1769-90), Penguin edition, Ed. by Pat Rogers, London, 1992., p.82.) The great Masters had over time discovered the rules by following which beautiful pictures would be produced, and the task of the student must be to learn these rules and develop the skills required to adhere to them. The two elements of the Academy - a place to keep and show fine works of art, and a place for aspiring artists to learn their profession, were important for each other, for one thing because students then constantly had to hand paradigms embodying the rules they were required to learn:

'By studying these authentic models, that idea of excellence which is the result of the accumulated experience of past ages, may be at once acquired; and the tardy and obstructed progress of our predecessors may teach us a shorter and easier way. The Student receives, at one glance, the principles which many Artists have spent their whole lives in ascertaining; and, satisfied with their effect, is spared the painful investigation by which they came to be known and fixed.' Discourses, I, p. 81.

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