Robert Henri Quotes

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

The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to see 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.

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.

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.

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

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

We read books. They make us think. It matters very little whether we agree with the books or not.

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

Knowledge of anatomy is a tool like good brushes.

There are men who, at the bottom of the ladder, battle to rise; they study, struggle, keep their wits alive and eventually get up to a place where they are received as an equal among respectable intellectuals. Here they find warmth and comfort for their pride, and here the struggle ends, and a death of many years commences. They could have gone on living.

Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you.

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.

Be venturesome. Try new things that appeal to you. Examine others. Have a pioneer spirit. Prevent your drawing from being common. Put life into it.

It is an effort to stop evolution, to hold things back to the plane of your judgment. It is a check on a great adventure of human life. It is negative to the idea that youth should go forward. It is for the coming generation to judge you, not for you to judge it. So it must happen, whether you will it or not.

Battle against obscurity

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

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.

All is as beautiful as we think it.

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

A GREAT PAINTER will know a great deal about how he did it, but still he will say, "How did I do it?" The real artist's work is a surprise to himself.

Color is only beautiful when it means something.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

There is no art without contemplation.

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

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.

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

We are troubled by having two selves, the inner and the outer. The outer one is rather dull and lets great things go by.

I have no sympathy with the belief that art is the restricted province of those who paint, sculpt, make music and verse. I hope we will come to an understanding that the material used is only incidental, that there is artist in every man; and that to him the possibility of development and of expression and the happiness of creation is as much a right and as much a duty to himself, as to any of those who work in the especially ticketed ways.

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.

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

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.

If we are cultivating fruit in an orchard, we wish that particular fruit to grow in its own way; we give it the soil it needs, the amount of moisture, the amount of care, but we do not treat the apple tree as we would the pear tree or the peach tree as we would the vineyard on the hillside. Each is allowed the freedom of its own kind and the result is the perfection of growth which can be accomplished in no other way. The time must come when the same freedom is allowed the individual; each in his own way must develop according to nature's purpose, the body must be but the channel for the expression of purpose, interest, emotion, labor. Everywhere freedom must be the sign of reason.

Those who cannot begin do not finish.

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.

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

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

Some one has defined a work of art as a "thing beautifully done." I like it better if we cut away the adverb and preserve the word "done," and let it stand alone in its fullest meaning. Things are not done beautifully. The beauty is an integral part of their being done.

A weak background is a deadly thing.

And so all great music,
great prose,
everything beautiful
must depend upon the sure,
free measure with which it is gardened
and put into language for the people,
for each lovely thing
has its intrinsic value
and belongs in its own position
for the world to study,
understand and thrive upon.

Sometimes we do grip the concert in a human head, and so hold it that in a way we get a record of it into paint, but the vision and expressing of one day will not do for the next.

THE TECHNIQUE of a little individuality will be a little technique, however scrupulously elaborated it may be.

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

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

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

Educate yourself. Don't let me educate you

Those who express even a little of themselves never become old-fashioned.

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.

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

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

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

Be game
take a chance
don't hide behind veils and veils of discretion ... Go forward with what you have to say, expressing things as you see them. You are new evidence, fresh and young. Your work, the spirit of youth, you are the progress of human evolution. If age dulls you it will be time enough then to be ponderous and heavy
or quit. It takes a tremendous amount of courage to be young, to continue growing
not to settle and accept.

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.

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

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

Self-education only produces expressions of self.

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.

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

It beats all the things that wealth can give and everything else in the world to say the things one believes, to put them into form, to pass them on to anyone who may care to take them up.

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.

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

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.

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

Self-acquainta nce is a rare condition.

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?

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

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

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

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 outsider, a gypsy over the face of the earth.

Concentrate on a single feature – as, build all toward one eye – make all lines lead toward that eye. (Robert Henri)

The end will be what it will be. The object is intense living, fulfillment; the great happiness in creation.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Do whatever you do intensely.

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.

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

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

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. The Brotherhood is powerful. It has many members. They are of all places and of all times. The members do not die. One is member to the degree that he can be member, no more, no less. And that part of him that is of the Brotherhood does not die. The work of the Brotherhood does not deal with surface events. Institutions on the world surface can rise and become powerful and they can destroy each other. Statesmen can put patch upon patch to make things continue to stand still. No matter what may happen on the surface the Brotherhood goes steadily on. It is the evolution of man. Let the surface destroy itself, the Brotherhood will start it again. For in all cases, no matter how strong the surface institutions become, no matter what laws may be laid down, what patches may be made, all change that is real is due to the Brotherhood.

A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.

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.

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.

Lines are results, do not draw them for themselves ... Lines give birth to lines. Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing ... Make a drawing flow, stopping sometimes, and going on ... Search for the simple constructive forces, line the lines of a suspension bridge. Get the few main lines and see what lines they call out ... Have purpose in the places where lines stop.

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.

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development.

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.

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