Page "Eclecticism in art" Paragraph 3

In the 18th century, Sir Joshua Reynolds, head of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, was one of the most influential advocates of eclecticism.

In the sixth of his famous academical Discourses ( 1774 ), he wrote that the painter may use the work of the ancients as a " magazine of common property, always open to the public, whence every man has a right to take what materials he pleases " ( Reynolds 1775, In 19th-century England, John Ruskin also pleaded for eclecticism.