William Merritt Chase Quotes

#1. I am not sure that it is a bad thing to go to a school, as I did, where the boys threw things at me, and asked if there was nothing else I could do [but draw].

William Merritt Chase

#2. Do not try to paint the grandiose thing. Paint the commonplace so that it will be distinguished.

William Merritt Chase

#3. Combine a certain amount of indifference with your ambition. Be carefully careless. If you don't succeed today, there is always tomorrow.

William Merritt Chase

#4. Don't try to make comparisons between your own pictures. Forget what you have done and think only of making the best of what you are doing.

William Merritt Chase

#5. Life is very short ... but I would like to live four times and if I could, I would set out to do no other things than I am seeking now to do.

William Merritt Chase

#6. Design is everything.

William Merritt Chase

#7. It takes two to paint. One to paint, the other to stand by with an axe to kill him before he spoils it.

William Merritt Chase

#8. Association with my pupils has kept me young in my work. Criticism of their work has kept my own point of view clear.

William Merritt Chase

#9. You must try to match your colors as nearly as you can to those you see before you, and you must study the effects of light and shade on nature's own hues and tints.

William Merritt Chase

#10. Do not imagine that I would disregard that thing that lies beneath the mask ... but be sure that when the outside is rightly seen, the thing that lies under the surface will be found upon your canvas.

William Merritt Chase

#11. My God, I'd rather go to Europe than go to heaven.

William Merritt Chase

#12. I don't believe in making pencil sketches and then painting landscape in your studio. You must be right under the sky.

William Merritt Chase