Robert Henri Quotes

112 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.

Robert Henri
Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition.

Robert Henri
Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. All the past can help you.

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

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

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

Robert Henri
Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday, and so the struggle is everlasting. Who am I today? What do I see today? How shall I use what I know, and how shall I avoid being victim of what I know? Life is not repetition.

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
Manet did not do the expected. He was a pioneer. He followed his individual whim. Told the public what he wanted it to know, not the time worn things the public already knew and thought it wanted to hear again. The public was very much offended.

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

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

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

Robert Henri
The only sensible way to regard the art life is that it is a privilege you are willing to pay for... You may cite honors and attentions and even money paid, but I would have you note that these were paid a long time after the creator had gone through his struggles.

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

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
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
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
I am always sorry for the Puritan, for he guided his life against desire and against nature. He found what he thought was comfort, for he believed the spirit's safety was in negation, but he has never given the world one minute's joy or produced one symbol of the beautiful order of nature. He sought peace in bondage and his spirit became a prisoner.

Robert Henri
Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy: It is a very personal affair and is necessary to each individual.

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
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...

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

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