Robert Henri Quotes

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.

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

Colors are beautiful when they are significant.

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.

Educate yourself. Don't let me educate you

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

There is no art without contemplation.

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

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.

Do whatever you do intensely.

The big painter is one who has something to say. He thus does not paint men, landscape or furniture, but an idea.

Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money.

What we need is more sense of the wonder of life and less of this business of making a picture.

In certain books—some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother.

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.

Those who cannot begin do not finish.

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

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.

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

Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you.

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.

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

In great art there is no beginning and end in point of time. All time is comprehended.

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.

Art is, after all, only a trace – like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness.

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.

Color is only beautiful when it means something.

A GREAT PAINTER will know a great deal about how he did it, but still he will say, “How did I do it?

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.

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.

Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.

An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible.

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.

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.

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

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

Your style is the way you talk in paint.

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture.

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

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

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

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

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. ... The model will serve equally for a Rembrandt drawing or for anybody's magazine cover. A genius is one who can see. The others can often 'draw' remarkably well. ... Those who get their technique first, expecting sight to come to them later, get a technique of a very ready-made order.

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

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

Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.

Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing.

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.