Robert Henri Quotes & Sayings

It is a curious fact that the delicate acoustic arrangements of a music hall can be impaired by the music of inefficient, discordant orchestras, and for this reason poor musical performances have been forbidden in some places. If a poor performance could affect adversely the acoustics of a hall, would not an able performance tend to improve them? — Robert Henri

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

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. — Robert Henri

There is always a commanding and simple line around each head. Learn to have a love for the big simple line. — Robert Henri

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

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. — Robert Henri

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

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

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

There is no art without contemplation. — Robert Henri

Do whatever you do intensely. — Robert Henri

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

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

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

Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you. — Robert Henri

All my life I have refused to be for or against parties, for or against nations, for or against people. I never seek novelty or the eccentric; I do not go from land to land to contrast civilizations. I seek only, wherever I go, for symbols of greatness, and as I have already said, they may be found in the eyes of a child, in the movement of a gladiator, in the heart of a gypsy, in twilight in Ireland or in moonrise over the deserts. To hold the spirit of greatness is in my mind what the world was created for. The human body is beautiful as this spirit shines through, and art is great as it translates and embodies this spirit. — Robert Henri

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

Do not expect pictures to say the expected; some of the best will have surprises for you, which will, at first, shock you. — Robert Henri

The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art. He needs no one to give him an 'Art Education'; he is already qualified. He needs but to see pictures with his active mind, look into them for the things that belong to him, and he will find soon enough in himself an art connoisseur and an art lover of the first order. — Robert Henri

Art need not be intended. It comes inevitably as the tree from the root, the branch from the trunk, the blossom from the twig. None of these forget the present in looking backward or forward. They are occupied wholly with the fulfillment of their own existence. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

The true artist regards his work as a means of talking with men [and women], of saying his say to himself and to others. It is not a question of pay ... — Robert Henri

Knowledge of anatomy is a tool like good brushes. — Robert Henri

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

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

Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure. — Robert Henri

There are mighty few people who think what they think they think. — Robert Henri

Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

Find out what you really like if you can. Find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing. — Robert Henri

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

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

The undercurrent and motive of all art is an individual man's idea. From each we expect what he has to give. We desire it. It is absolutely necessary for him to give it out. — Robert Henri

Beauty is an intangible thing; can not be fixed on the surface, and the wear and tear of old age on the body cannot defeat it. Nor will a "pretty" face make it, for "pretty" faces are often dull and empty, and beauty is never dull and it fills all spaces. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

A weak background is a deadly thing. — Robert Henri

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

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. — Robert Henri

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

Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad. — Robert Henri

All manifestations of art are but landmarks in the progress of the human spirit toward a thing but as yet sensed and far from being possessed. — Robert Henri

Strokes carry a message whether you will it or not. The stroke is just like the artist at the time he makes it. All the certainties, all the uncertainties, all the bigness of his spirit and the littlenesses are in it. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

Develop your visual memory. Draw everything you have drawn from the model from memory as well. — Robert Henri

Each man must seek for himself the people who hold the essential beauty, and each man must eventually say to himself as I do, 'these are my people and all that I have I owe to them. — Robert Henri

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

A Curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted with a straight line. — Robert Henri

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

There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

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

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. — Robert Henri

Self-education only produces expressions of self. — Robert Henri

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

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. — Robert Henri

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual- become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it. — Robert Henri

Those who cannot begin do not finish. — Robert Henri

Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers; read, study and think a great deal of life ... — Robert Henri

Color is only beautiful when it means something. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

To have ideas one must have imagination. To express ideas one must have science. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

All is as beautiful as we think it. — Robert Henri

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

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

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

Water runs down hill concisely. There is no quibbling about it. It does not have to run up hill in order to be entertaining. Man has always followed its course with fascination. The soul of man may reveal its mysteries through direct expression, simple speech, simple gesture, simple painting, just as the soul of the brook is expressed in full simplicity and economy. — Robert Henri

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development. — Robert Henri

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

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

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

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. — Robert Henri

Beauty is no material thing. Beauty cannot be copied. Beauty is the sensation of pleasure on the mind of the seer. No thing is beautiful. But all things await the sensitive and imaginative mind that may be aroused to pleasurable emotion at sight of them. This is beauty. — Robert Henri

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

If a certain activity, such as painting, becomes the habitual mode of expression, it may follow that taking up the painting materials and beginning work with them will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the higher state. — Robert Henri

The brain can be a wonderful tool, can be a willing slave, as has been evidenced by some men, but of course it works poorly when it has not the habit of usage. An automobile can become a source of delight, but the first time you drive you are as apt to go up a tree as to go up the road. — Robert Henri

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

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. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

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

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. — Robert Henri

Colors are beautiful when they are significant. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you. — Robert Henri

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

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. — Robert Henri

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

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

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

Art is an extension of language - an expression of sensations too subtle for words. — Robert Henri

We must realize that artists are not in competition with each other. Help the young artists - find for them means to make their financial ways easier, that they may develop and fruit their fullest - but let us not ask them to please us in doing it. — Robert Henri

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. — Robert Henri

Battle against obscurity — Robert Henri

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

In these times there is a powerful demarcation between the surface and the deep currents of human development. Events and upheavals, which seem more profound than they really are, are happening on the surface. But there is another and deeper change in progress. It is of long, steady persistent growth, very little affected and not at all disturbed by surface conditions. The artist of today should be alive to this deeper evolution on which all growth depends, has depended and will depend. On the surface there is the battle of institutions, the illustration of events, the strife between peoples. On the surface there is propaganda and there is the effort to force opinions. The deeper current carries no propaganda. The shock of the surface upheaval does not deflect it from its course. It is in search of fundamental principle; that basic principle of all, which in degree as it is apprehended points the way to beauty and order, and to the law of nature. — Robert Henri

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

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. — Robert Henri

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