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!

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

Work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

An artist's career always begins tomorrow

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

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

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.