James Whistler Quotes
-
Work alone will efface the footsteps of work.
→ -
If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.
→ -
I always ask at once, 'Do you drink?' and if she says 'No,' I bow politely and say I am sorry but I fear she will not suit. All good cooks drink.
→ -
Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only - having no desire to teach.
→ -
The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter - perfect in its bud as in its bloom - with no reason to explain its presence - no mission to fulfill - a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist - a puzzle to the botanist - an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.
→ -
I am not arguing with you - I am telling you.
→ -
It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.
→ -
Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.
→ -
You shouldn't say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.
→ -
Industry in art is a necessity - not a virtue - and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work.
→ -
For art and joy go together, with bold openness, and high head, and ready hand - fearing naught and dreading no exposure.
→ -
A student of James McNeill Whistler tells the great artist, 'I tend to paint what I see.' Whistler replies, 'Ah! The shock will come when you see what you paint!
→ -
A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared.
→ -
Over and over again did the Attorney-General cry out aloud, in the agony of his cause, 'What is to become of painting if the critics withhold their lash?
→ -
The rare few, who, early in life have rid themselves of the friendship of the many.
→ -
I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.
→ -
Nature is usually wrong.
→ -
I remember that at one time I always made a drawing before going to bed!! - Of myself I mean - though I finally destroyed most of them.
→ -
The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.
→ -
Frederic Leighton to James McNeill Whistler: 'My dear Whistler, you leave your pictures in such a sketchy, unfinished state. Why don't you ever finish them?' James McNeill Whistler to Frederic Leighton: 'My dear Leighton, why do you ever begin yours?
→ -
Hang on the walls of your mind the memory of your successes. Take counsel of your strength, not your weakness. Think of the good jobs you have done. Think of the times when you rose above your average level of performance and carried out an idea or a dream or a desire for which you had deeply longed. Hang these pictures on the walls of your mind and look at them as you travel the roadway of life.
→ -
To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.
→ -
If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.
→ -
Truly color is vice! Of course, it can be, and has the right to be one of the finest virtues. Controlled by the strong hand and careful guidance of her Master drawing, color is a splendid Mistress, with a mate worthy of herself, her lover, but her Master likewise, the most magnificent Mistress possible, and the result is evident in all the glorious things that spring from their union.
→ -
The world is divided into two classes - invalids and nurses.
→ -
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
→ -
To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.
→ -
People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.
→ -
The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow - suggests no effort - and is finished from its beginning.
→ -
Listen! There was never an artistic period. There was never an art-loving nation.
→