Top 172 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Henri - Page 3

A picture should be the expression of the will of the painter.

There is weakness in pretending to know more than you know or in stating less than you know.

Realize that a drawing is not a copy. It is a construction in very different materials. A drawing is an invention.

Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers; read, study and think a great deal of life.

All education must be self-education.

Manet did not do the expected. He was a pioneer. He followed his individual whim. Told the public what he wanted it to know, not the time worn things the public already knew and thought it wanted to hear again. The public was very much offended.

A mountain seen in the haze of distance must nevertheless look a solid heavy mountain.

Self-acquainta nce is a rare condition.

Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad.

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

There is nothing more entertaining than to have a frank talk with yourself. Few do it-frankly. Educating yourself is getting acquainted with yourself.

You form a society: that limits you. Adopt a name, and you've limited yourself again; draw up a constitution and bylaws and you've made a groove, a rut, that hampers your growth. You think you can fix your course and move straight along it. But sometimes the important thing is to strike out sidewise.

There has never been a painting that was more beautiful than nature. The model does not unfold herself to you, you must rise to her. She should be the inspiration for your painting. No man has ever over-appreciated a human being.

Concentrate on a single feature - as, build all toward one eye - make all lines lead toward that eye.

If you do not act on a suggestion at first, you grow dull to its message.

Beauty is an intangible thing; can not be fixed on the surface, and the wear and tear of old age on the body cannot defeat it. Nor will a "pretty" face make it, for "pretty" faces are often dull and empty, and beauty is never dull and it fills all spaces.

The true artist regards his work as a means of talking with men [and women], of saying his say to himself and to others. It is not a question of pay.

Work always as if you were a master, expect from yourself a masterpiece.

There are people who buy pictures because they were difficult to do, and are done. Such pictures are often only a record of pain and dull perseverance. Great works of art should look as though they were made in joy. Real joy is a tremendous activity, dull drudgery is nothing to it.

Be a warhorse for work and enjoy even the struggle against defeat.

All the past up to a moment ago is your legacy. You have a right to it.

Each sensation is precious, protect it, cherish it, keep it. Never give it away. You must develop that balance which allows all of the world to come in to you, and only that which you have expressed in your art to move back out again into the world.

You pass people on the street, some are for you, some are not.

I am interested in the size of your intention. It is better to overstate the important than to understate it.

The reason for the survival of the award system is purely commercial.

Strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and the littlenesses are in it.

Your style is the way you talk in paint.

Finished persons are very common - people who are closed up, quite satisfied that there is little more to learn

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture.

The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment.

If you work from memory, you are most likely to put in your real feeling.

Do not expect pictures to say the expected; some of the best will have surprises for you, which will, at first, shock you.

There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body.

By my teaching I hope to inspire you to personal activity and to present your vision.

If you think of a school drawing while you work, your drawing will look like one.

Everything depends on the attitude of the artist toward his subject. It is essential.

Count on big lines to express your ideas.

Reality is obtained not by imitation, but by producing the sense of nature.

Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money.

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. ... The model will serve equally for a Rembrandt drawing or for anybody's magazine cover. A genius is one who can see. The others can often 'draw' remarkably well. ... Those who get their technique first, expecting sight to come to them later, get a technique of a very ready-made order.

Perhaps whatever there is in my work that may be really interesting to others and surely what is interesting to me, is the result of a sometimes successful effort to free myself from any idea that what I produce must be art.

The artist should be intoxicated with the idea of the thing he wants to express.

The more simply you see, the more simply you will render. People see too much, scatteringly.

All manifestations of art are but landmarks in the progress of the human spirit toward a thing but as yet sensed and far from being possessed.

Has your drawing the meaning you saw in the model at first?

The model is not to be copied, but to be realized.

Because we are saturated with life, because we are human, our strongest motive is life, humanity; and the stronger the motive back of the line the stronger, and therefore more beautiful, the line will be.

The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

Things should all be moving toward the expression of a great idea.

I have heard it very often said that an artist does not need intelligence, that his is the province of the soul

All is as beautiful as we think it.

The picture that looks as if it were done without an effort may have been a perfect battlefield in its making.