James Whistler Quotes

#1. The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow - suggests no effort - and is finished from its beginning.

James Whistler

#2. Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong ...

James Whistler

#3. I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

James Whistler

#4. A student of James McNeill Whistler tells the great artist, 'I tend to paint what I see.' Whistler replies, 'Ah! The shock will come when you see what you paint!

James Whistler

#5. If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.

James Whistler

#6. To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.

James Whistler

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

James Whistler

#8. It is for the artist ... in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.

James Whistler

#9. Can't a person be born where they want to be born?

James Whistler

#10. If silicon had been a gas I should have been a major-general.

James Whistler

#11. An artist's career always begins tomorrow.

James Whistler

#12. People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.

James Whistler

#13. Frederic Leighton to James McNeill Whistler: 'My dear Whistler, you leave your pictures in such a sketchy, unfinished state. Why don't you ever finish them?' James McNeill Whistler to Frederic Leighton: 'My dear Leighton, why do you ever begin yours?

James Whistler

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

James Whistler

#15. I remember that at one time I always made a drawing before going to bed!! - Of myself I mean - though I finally destroyed most of them.

James Whistler

#16. If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.

James Whistler

#17. You should not say it is not good. You should say you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

James Whistler

#18. Paint should not be applied thick. It should be like a breath on the surface of a pane of glass.

James Whistler

#19. The explanation is quite simple. I wished to be near my mother.

James Whistler

#20. I always ask at once, 'Do you drink?' and if she says 'No,' I bow politely and say I am sorry but I fear she will not suit. All good cooks drink.

James Whistler

#21. We look at a painting to know the painter; it's his company we are after, not his skill.

James Whistler

#22. The rare few, who, early in life have rid themselves of the friendship of the many.

James Whistler

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

James Whistler

#24. As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.

James Whistler

#25. Nature is usually wrong.

James Whistler

#26. 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.

James Whistler

#27. Over and over again did the Attorney-General cry out aloud, in the agony of his cause, 'What is to become of painting if the critics withhold their lash?

James Whistler

#28. A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared.

James Whistler

#29. I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

James Whistler

#30. The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.

James Whistler

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

James Whistler

#32. To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

James Whistler

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

James Whistler

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

James Whistler

#35. I am not arguing with you - I am telling you.

James Whistler

#36. Mauve is just pink trying to be purple.

James Whistler