James Whistler Quotes

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.

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

An artist's career always begins tomorrow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Mauve is just pink trying to be purple.

Nature is usually wrong.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.