Robert Henri Quotes

Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.

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

Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you.

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

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

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

The fun of living is that we have to make ourselves, after all.

Painting should never look as if it were done with difficulty, however difficult it may actually have been.

The artist should have a powerful will. He should be powerfully possessed by one idea

Renoir had not only a great interest in human character, in human feeling, but had also a great love for the people he painted.

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

Self-education only produces expressions of self.

Students work in schools making life studies for years, win prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy.

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.

All education must be self-education.

A picture should be the expression of the will of the painter.

I am interested in the size of your intention. It is better to overstate the important than to understate it.

Reality is obtained not by imitation, but by producing the sense of nature.

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

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

The artist should be intoxicated with the idea of the thing he wants to express.

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

Concentrate on a single feature - as, build all toward one eye - make all lines lead toward that eye.

The model is not to be copied, but to be realized.

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

Has your drawing the meaning you saw in the model at first?

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

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.

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.

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

Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men.

Completion does not depend on material representation. The work is done when that special thing has been said.

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

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.

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.

There is nothing more entertaining than to have a frank talk with yourself. Few do it-frankly. Educating yourself is getting acquainted with yourself.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Those who cannot begin do not finish.

Art after all is but an extension of language to the expression of sensations too subtle for words.

The ignorant are to be found as much among the educated as among the uneducated.

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development.

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.

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

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

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.

Look for echoes. Sometimes the same shape or direction will echo through the picture.