Top 172 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Henri

Good composition is like a suspension bridge - each line adds strength and takes none away.

Do whatever you do intensely.

Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. All the past can help you.

Genius is not a possession of the limited few, but exists in some degree in everyone. Where there is natural growth, a full and free play of faculties, genius will manifest itself.

I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.

There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.

A tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.

Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.

It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.

It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him.

You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you.

In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?

The pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish, and spirits must flow. There must be courage. There are no easy ruts to get into which lead to happiness. A man must become interesting to himself and must become actually expressive before he can be happy.

Let every student enter the school with this advice. No matter how good the school is, his education is in his own hands. All education must be self education.

Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.

Get the few main lines and see what lines they call out.

An artist must first of all respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion toward that subject and then he must make his technique so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it.

A weak background is a deadly thing.

The pernicious influence of the prize and medal giving in art is so great that it should be stopped. History proves that juries in art have been generally wrong.

Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.

Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature.

The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art. He needs no one to give him an 'Art Education'; he is already qualified. He needs but to see pictures with his active mind, look into them for the things that belong to him, and he will find soon enough in himself an art connoisseur and an art lover of the first order.

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development.

An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible.

A drawing should be a verdict on the model. Don't confuse a drawing with a map.

Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you.

To have ideas one must have imagination. To express ideas one must have science.

The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to think it through. You have to make up your mind to be alone in many ways. We like sympathy and we like to be in company. It is easier than going it alone. But alone one gets acquainted with himself, grows up and on, not stopping with the crowd. It costs to do this. If you succeed somewhat you may have to pay for it as well as enjoy it all your life.

Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life's experience.

We are not here to do what has already been done.

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.

The ignorant are to be found as much among the educated as among the uneducated.

Art is, after all, only a trace – like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness.

Art after all is but an extension of language to the expression of sensations too subtle for words.

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it.

Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition.

It is the common defect of modern art study. Too many students do not know why they draw.

I paint for the sole purpose of magnifying the privilege of being alive.

Color is only beautiful when it means something.

Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men.

Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing.

Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy.

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual- become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.

No work of Art is really ever finished. They only stop at good places.

Find out what you really like if you can. Find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing.

Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.

What we need is more sense of the wonder of life and less of this business of making a picture.

Develop your visual memory. Draw everything you have drawn from the model from memory as well.

Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday, and so the struggle is everlasting. Who am I today? What do I see today? How shall I use what I know, and how shall I avoid being victim of what I know? Life is not repetition.

A GREAT PAINTER will know a great deal about how he did it, but still he will say, “How did I do it?

If the artist's will is not strong he will see all kinds of unessential things.

Beauty is no material thing. Beauty cannot be copied. Beauty is the sensation of pleasure on the mind of the seer. No thing is beautiful. But all things await the sensitive and imaginative mind that may be aroused to pleasurable emotion at sight of them. This is beauty.

Knowledge of anatomy is a tool like good brushes.

There is no art without contemplation.

The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

Those who cannot begin do not finish.

Art is an outsider, a gypsy over the face of the earth.

Completion does not depend on material representation. The work is done when that special thing has been said.