Robert Henri Quotations

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Do whatever you do intensely.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art.

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

The pictures which do not represent an intense interest cannot expect to create an intense interest.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

There is no art without contemplation.

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

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

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.

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

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

The great painter has something to say. He does not paint men, landscapes, or furniture; but an idea.

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

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

Lines are results, do not draw them for themselves.

Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.

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

Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you.

Color is only beautiful when it means something.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

There are forms that can only be seen when you are near a painting, others only appear when you are far away.

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

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

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.

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

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

A weak background is a deadly thing.

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

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

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

Through art, mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men. They are the bonds of a great Brotherhood. Those who are of the Brotherhood know each other, and time and space cannot separate them.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

All outward success, when it has value, is but the inevitable result of an inward success of full living, full play and enjoyment of one's faculties.

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

All is as beautiful as we think it.

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development.

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

Many receive a criticism and think it is fine; think they got their money's worth; think well of the teacher for it, and then go on with their work just the same as before. That is the reason much of the wisdom of Plato is still locked up in the pages of Plato.

Renoir had not only a great interest in human character, in human feeling, but had also a great love for the people he painted.

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

The good thing about painting from memory is that so much is forgotten.