James McNeill Whistler Quotes

37 Sourced Quotes

Why should not I call my works 'symphonies', 'arrangements', 'harmonies', and 'nocturnes'?... 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. My picture of 'Harmony in Grey and Gold' is an illustration of my meaning – as snow scene with a single black figure and lighted tavern. I care nothing for the past, present, or future of the black figure, placed there because the black was wanted at that spot. All that I know is that my combination of grey and gold is the basis of the picture, Now this is precisely what my friends cannot grasp.

James McNeill Whistler
Industry in art is a necessity - not a virtue - and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

James McNeill Whistler
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.

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

James McNeill Whistler
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.

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

James McNeill Whistler
Attorney-General Sir John Holker: The labor of two days, then, is that for which you ask two hundred guineas? Whistler: No; — I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime.

James McNeill Whistler
Oscar Wilde: How I wish I had said that.
Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will.

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

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

James McNeill Whistler
A group from Glasgow sought in 1891 to purchase his portrait of Thomas Carlyle was shocked that Whistler's price was 1000 guineas. A spokesman countered that the portrait was not even life size. Whistler replied, 'But, you know, few men are life size.'

James McNeill Whistler
One cannot continually disappoint a Continent.

James McNeill Whistler
If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day: to paint the man, in short, as well as his features; in arrangement of colours to treat a flower as his key, not as his model. This is now understood indifferently well – at least by dressmakers. In every costume you see attention is paid to the key-note of colour which runs through the composition, as the chant of the Anabaptists through the 'Prophète', or the Hugenots' hymn in the opera of that name.

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

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

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

James McNeill Whistler
Over and over again did the Attorney-General cry out aloud, in the agony of his cause, 'What is to become of painting if the critics withhold their lash?

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

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

James McNeill Whistler
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.

James McNeill Whistler
Yes—one does like to make one's mummy just as nice as possible!
On his portrait of his mother

James McNeill Whistler
I say I can't thank you too much for the name 'Nocturne' as a title for my moonlights! You have no idea what an irritation it proves to the critics and consequent pleasure to me — besides it is really so charming and does so poetically say all that I want to say and no more than I wish.

James McNeill Whistler
I am not arguing with you — I am telling you.

James McNeill Whistler
Yes, madam, Nature is creeping up.
Iin response to a lady who said that a landscape reminded her of his work

James McNeill Whistler
Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only — having no desire to teach.

James McNeill Whistler
John Ruskin: 'The labour of two days is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?'
Whistler: 'No. I ask it for the knowledge I have gained in the work of a lifetime.'

James McNeill Whistler
On failing a chemistry test at the U.S. Military Academy:
Had silicon been a gas, I would have been a major-general by now.

James McNeill Whistler
To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labor, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

James McNeill Whistler
Tip on how to become an artist:
All you need to know is which end of the brush to put in your mouth.

James McNeill Whistler
May I therefore acknowledge the tender glow of health induced by reading, as I sat here in the morning sun, the flattering attention paid me by your gentleman of ready wreath and quick biography!

James McNeill Whistler