The Analysis of Beauty Written with a view of fixing the fluctuating ideas of taste

To the amazing variety of forms made still infinitely more various in appearance by light, shade and colour, nature hath added another way of increasing that variety, still more...

The very great difficulty there is in describing this line, either in words, or by the pencil (as was hinted before, when I first mention'd it) will make it necessary for me to...

respect to the breadth, makes a _double suprabipartient_, a _diapason_, and a _diatesseron_[7]:" which, in my opinion, would have been full as applicable to the ear, or to a pla...

Although both this and the next chapter may seem more particularly relative to the art of painting, than any of the foregoing; yet, as hitherto, I have endeavour'd to be underst...

Having thus spoken briefly of light, shade, and colour, we now return to our lineal account of form, as proposed (page 91) with regard to the face. It is an observation, that, o...

I now offer to the public a short essay, accompanied with two explanatory prints, in which I shall endeavour to shew what the principles are in nature, by which we are directed...

By the beauty of colouring, the painters mean that disposition of colours on objects, together with their proper shades, which appear at the same time both distinctly varied and...

If anyone should ask, what it is that constitutes a fine-proportion'd human figure? how ready and seemingly decisive is the common answer: _a just symmetry and harmony of parts...

Thus far having endeavoured to open as large an idea as possible of the power of variety, by having partly shewn that those lines which have most variety in themselves, contribu...

Huge shapeless rocks have a pleasing kind of horror in them, and the wide ocean awes us with its vast contents; but when forms of beauty are presented to the eye in large quanti...

Under this head I shall attempt shewing what it is that gives the appearance of that hollow or vacant space in which all things move so freely; and in what manner light, shade a...

The active mind is ever bent to be employ'd. Pursuing is the business of our lives; and even abstracted from any other view, gives pleasure. Every arising difficulty, that for a...

Such dispositions of the body and limbs as appear most graceful when seen at rest, depend upon gentle winding contrasts, mostly govern'd by the precise serpentine line, which in...

It may be imagined that the greatest part of the effects of beauty results from the symmetry of parts in the object, which is beautiful: but I am very well persuaded, this preva...

Simplicity, without variety, is wholly insipid, and at best does only not displease; but when variety is join'd to it, then it pleases, because it enhances the pleasure of varie...

Fitness of the parts to the design for which every individual thing is form'd, either by art or nature, is first to be consider'd, as it is of the greatest consequence to the be...

There is scarce a room in any house whatever, where one does not see the waving-line employ'd in some way or other. How inelegant would the shapes of all our moveables be withou...

It may be remember'd that in the introduction, the reader is desired to consider the surfaces of objects as so many shells of lines, closely connected together, which idea of th...

The shapes and colours of plants, flowers, leaves, the paintings in butterflies wings, shells, &c. seem of little other intended use, than that of entertaining the eye with the...

fore-ground, middle-ground, and distance or back-ground; which simple and distinct quantities _mass_ together that variety which entertains the eye; as the different parts of ba...

_Of the FACE_. 1. _In the highest taste, and the reverse_. 2. _As to character and expression_. 3. _Of the manner in which the lines of the Face alter from infancy upwards, and...