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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Many things that come into the world are not looked into. The individual says 'My crowd doesn't run that way.' I say, don't run with crowds.

Feel the dignity of a child. Do not feel superior to him, for you are not.

Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Students work in schools making life studies for years, win prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy.

All education must be self-education.

Self-education only produces expressions of self.

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

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...

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

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

Your style is the way you talk in paint.

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.

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

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.

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture.

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.

Self-acquainta nce is a rare condition.

I can think of no greater happiness than to be clear-sighted and know the miracle when it happens. And I can think of no more real life than the adventurous one of living and liking and exclaiming the things of one's own time.

Educate yourself. Don't let me educate you

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.

Colors are beautiful when they are significant.

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.

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

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.

The pursuit of happiness...is the greatest feat man has to accomplish.

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

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.

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

Count on big lines to express your ideas.

The world will see many fashions of art and most of the world will follow the fashions and make none. These cults - these 'movements' - are absolutely necessary, or at any rate their causes are, for somewhere in their centres are the ones who bear the Idea, the ones who have questioned, 'But what do I think?' and 'How shall I say it best?

Art is an extension of language - an expression of sensations too subtle for words.

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

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

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...

Knowledge of anatomy is a tool like good brushes.

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

Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy: It is a very personal affair and is necessary to each individual.

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

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.

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.

Those who cannot begin do not finish.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development.

All is as beautiful as we think it.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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