Top 43 Quotes & Sayings by Winslow Homer

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American artist Winslow Homer.

Last updated on November 8, 2024.

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in American art.

American - Artist | February 24, 1836 - September 29, 1910

Source: Wikipedia

Every condition must be favorable, or I do not work and will not.

Winslow Homer

You can't get along without a knowledge of the principles and rules governing the influence of one color upon another. A mechanic might as well try to get along without tools.

Winslow Homer

I wouldn't go across the street to see a Bouguereau. His pictures look false; he does not get the truth of what he wishes to represent. His light is not outdoor light; his works are waxy and artificial. They are extremely near being frauds.

Winslow Homer

Only once in the last thirty years have I made a duplicate, and that was a watercolor from my oil picture now owned by the Layton Art Gallery, Milwaukee, called 'Hark! the Lark.'

Winslow Homer

The life that I have chosen gives me my full hours of enjoyment for the balance of my life: the sun will not rise, or set, without my notice and thanks.

Winslow Homer

If a man wants to be an artist, he must never look at pictures.

Winslow Homer

I do not care to put out any ideas for pictures. They are too valuable and can be appropriated by any art student, defrauding me out of a possible picture.

Winslow Homer

With the duckets that I now have safe, I think I will retire at 66 years of age, praise God, in good health.

Winslow Homer

A man is known by his works. That I have heard at many a funeral.

Winslow Homer

I prefer every time a picture composed and painted outdoors.

Winslow Homer

You will see - in the future, I will live by my watercolors.

Winslow Homer

The slavery at Bufford's was too fresh in my recollection to let me care to bind myself again. From the time that I took my nose off that lithographic stone, I have had no master, and never shall have any.

Winslow Homer

This making studies and then taking them home to use them is only half right. You get composition, but you lose freshness; you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.

Winslow Homer

Do not think that I have stopped painting, for at any moment, I am liable to paint a good picture.

Winslow Homer

It is certainly a most tremendous and unprecedented honor and distinction that I have received from Pittsburgh. Let us hope that it is not too late in my case to be of value to American art in something that I may yet possibly do from this encouragement.

Winslow Homer

Talent! There's no such thing as talent. What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous hard work in the right way.

Winslow Homer

The sun will not rise or set without my notice, and thanks.

Winslow Homer

I don't want a lot of people nosing round my studio and bothering me. I don't want to see them at all. Let the dealers have all that bother.

Winslow Homer

Anything written or printed under a print or picture takes the attention from it and, if it is very black or white in any marked degree, will utterly destroy its beauty.

Winslow Homer

I decide to go direct to Key West... I know the place quite well, and it's near the points in Florida that I wish to visit. I have an idea at present of doing some work but do not know how long that will last.

Winslow Homer

Mr. C. Klackner has for sale four etchings etched by myself, at the expense of two years' time & hard work - 'The Life Line,' 'Peril on the Sea,' 'Eight Bells,' 'Mending Tears,' - all of which are very good and should have been put forward long ago, but C. Klackner is waiting for me to die, is my idea of the matter.

Winslow Homer

When will you learn that the time to buy a thing is when you find what you want? If you go back the next year and try to get more, they will try to sell you something else.

Winslow Homer

The life that I have chosen gives me my full hours of enjoyment.

Winslow Homer

Oh what a friend chance can be — when it chooses.

Winslow Homer

The most interesting part of my life is of no concern to the public.

Winslow Homer

It is wonderful how much depends upon the relations of black and white A black and white, if properly balanced, suggests colour.

Winslow Homer

I will paint for money any time.

Winslow Homer

All is lovely outside my house and inside my house and myself.

Winslow Homer

The Sun will not rise or set without my notice and thanks.

Winslow Homer

Artists should never look at pictures, but should stutter in a language of their own.

Winslow Homer

When you paint, try to put down exactly what you see. Whatever else you have to offer will come out anyway.

Winslow Homer

I regret very much that I have painted a picture that requires any description.

Winslow Homer

What's the use? The people are too stupid. They do not understand.

Winslow Homer

Never put more than two waves in a picture; it's fussy.

Winslow Homer

The life that I have chosen gives me my full hours of enjoyment for the balance of my life. The sun will not rise, or set, without my notice, and thanks.

Winslow Homer

You will see, in the future I will live by my watercolors.

Winslow Homer

There is no such thing as talent. What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous work in the right way.

Winslow Homer

I thought for a change I would give up drinking, and it was a great mistake, and, although I reduced the size of my nose and improved my beauty, my stomach suffered.

Winslow Homer

You have the sky overhead giving one light; then the reflected light from whatever reflects; then the direct light of the sun; so that, in the blending and suffusing of these several luminations, there is no such thing as a line to be seen anywhere.

Winslow Homer

Look at nature, work independently, and solve your own problems.

Winslow Homer

Only think of my being alive with a reputation!

Winslow Homer

I prefer every time a picture composed and painted outdoors. The thing is done without your knowing it.

Winslow Homer