Resumen de On Reynolds's use of de Piles, Locke, and Hume in his essays on Rubens and Gainsborough
The 18th-century British artist and critic Sir Joshua Reynolds drew on the writings of the French art critic Roger de Piles and the English empiricists John Locke and David Hume in his essay on the artist Thomas Gainsborough in Discourse XIV. Reynolds regarded Gainsborough as an artist of a lower rank, but one integral to the burgeoning English School of painting. In Discourse XIV, he discusses Gainsborough in terms derived from his essay “Character of Rubens,” which in turn draws heavily on the writings of de Piles, who championed Rubens, thus elevating color over line and attacking the academic principles of the French Academy. Reynolds, therefore, situates Gainsborough in an art-historical category whose main features had been devised by de Piles in direct opposition to the French Academy. However, uncertain as to how to deal with the kind of painting perfected by Rubens and practiced by Gainsborough, he interprets de Piles through a characteristically English set of ideas, incorporating them into a framework provided by the empiricists Locke and Hume.
