Robert Henri - Work Quotes

20 Sourced Quotes

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

Robert Henri
If you work from memory, you are most likely to put in your real feeling.

Robert Henri
There are people who buy pictures because they were difficult to do, and are done. Such pictures are often only a record of pain and dull perseverance. Great works of art should look as though they were made in joy. Real joy is a tremendous activity, dull drudgery is nothing to it.

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

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

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

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

Robert Henri
When the motives of artists are profound, when they are at their work as a result of deep consideration, when they believe in the importance of what they are doing, their work creates a stir in the world.

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
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 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
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
The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to think it through. You have to make up your mind to be alone in many ways. We like sympathy and we like to be in company. It is easier than going it alone. But alone one gets acquainted with himself, grows up and on, not stopping with the crowd. It costs to do this. If you succeed somewhat you may have to pay for it as well as enjoy it all your life.

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

Robert Henri
A work of art is the trace of a magnificent struggle.

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