Robert henri quotes

Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing.

All real works of art look as though they were done in joy.

In great art there is no beginning and end in point of time. All time is comprehended.

Color is only beautiful when it means something.

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

Art need not be intended. It comes inevitably as the tree from the root, the branch from the trunk, the blossom from the twig. None of these forget the present in looking backward or forward. They are occupied wholly with the fulfillment of their own existence.

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

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.

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

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

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

When the motives of artists are profound, when they are at their work as a result of deep consideration, when they believe in the importance of what they are doing, their work creates a stir in the world.

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

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

It's a wrong idea that a master is a finished person. Masters are very faulty; they haven't learned everything and they know it.

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

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.

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

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.

There is no art without contemplation.

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.

When we respect the nude, we will no longer have any shame about it.

There are pictures that manifest education and there are pictures that manifest love.

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.

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

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

Your painting is the marking of your progression into nature, a sensation of something you see way beyond the two pretty colors over there. Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit.

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.

It seems to me that before a man tries to express anything to the world he must recognize in himself an individual, a new one, very distinct from others.

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

A Curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted with a straight line.

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

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

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.

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.

An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.

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

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.

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

To paint is to know how to put nothing on canvas, and have it look like something when you stand back.

Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.

Those who cannot begin do not finish.

Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.

Whatever you feel or think your exact state at the exact moment of your brush touching the canvas is in some way registered in that stroke.

Colors are beautiful when they are significant.

Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure.

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

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

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.

Your style is the way you talk in paint.

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.

Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you.

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

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

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

Your only hope of satisfying others is in satisfying yourself. I speak of a great satisfaction, not a commercial satisfaction.

The big painter is one who has something to say. He thus does not paint men, landscape or furniture, but an idea.

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

The artist should have a powerful will. He should be powerfully possessed by one idea

You will never draw the sense of a thing unless you are feeling it at the time you work.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Look for echoes. Sometimes the same shape or direction will echo through the picture.

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

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

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

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

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.

The fun of living is that we have to make ourselves, after all.

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

Lines are results, do not draw them for themselves.

Art tends toward balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living – very good things for anyone to be interested in.

Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit.

Don't worry about the rejections. Everybody that's good has gone through it. Don't let it matter if your works are not "accepted" at once. The better or more personal you are the less likely they are of acceptance.

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.

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?

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development.

In certain books—some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother.

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

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.

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.

To be free, to be happy and to be fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.

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

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.

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.

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

Painting should never look as if it were done with difficulty, however difficult it may actually have been.

We make our discoveries while in the state [of high functioning] because then we are clear-sighted.

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

The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.

The only sensible way to regard the art life is that it is a privilege you are willing to pay for... You may cite honors and attentions and even money paid, but I would have you note that these were paid a long time after the creator had gone through his struggles.

The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art.

I am always sorry for the Puritan, for he guided his life against desire and against nature. He found what he thought was comfort, for he believed the spirit's safety was in negation, but he has never given the world one minute's joy or produced one symbol of the beautiful order of nature. He sought peace in bondage and his spirit became a prisoner.

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

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.

Personal experimentation is revealing, and once you get into it, immensely engaging.

Self-education only produces expressions of self.

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.

Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.

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

Knowledge of anatomy is a tool like good brushes.

Do whatever you do intensely.

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.

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

There is only one reason for art in America, and that is that the people of America learn the means of expressing themselves in their own time, and their own land.

The object, which is back of every true work of art, is the attainment of a state of being, a state of high functioning, a more than ordinary moment of existence. In such moments activity is inevitable, and whether this activity is with brush, pen, chisel, or tongue, its result is but a by-product of the state, a trace, the footprint of the state.

A weak background is a deadly thing.

Self-acquainta nce is a rare condition.

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

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.

In a tree there is a spirit of life, a spirit of growth and a spirit of holding its head up.

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.

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

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

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

If a certain activity, such as painting, becomes the habitual mode of expression, it may follow that taking up the painting materials and beginning work with them will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the higher state.

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

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

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

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.

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.