James Whistler Art Quotations

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.

Art should be independent of all clap-trap - should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it; and that is why I insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies.

Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only - having no desire to teach.

Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.

Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there cannot progress.

Industry in art is a necessity - not a virtue - and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

Listen! There was never an artistic period. There was never an art-loving nation.

For art and joy go together, with bold openness, and high head, and ready hand - fearing naught and dreading no exposure.