James Whistler Quotes

Quotes about:

• An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

  James Whistler

  Tattoo, Art, Creativity

  63 Copy quote

• Hang on the walls of your mind the memory of your successes. Take counsel of your strength, not your weakness. Think of the good jobs you have done. Think of the times when you rose above your average level of performance and carried out an idea or a dream or a desire for which you had deeply longed. Hang these pictures on the walls of your mind and look at them as you travel the roadway of life.

  James Whistler

  Inspirational, Strength, Success

  62 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Whistler

  Photography, Kings, Flower

  James M. Whistler (2012). “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, p.107, Courier Corporation

  12 Copy quote

• Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artists is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful - as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony

  James Whistler

  Beautiful, Wise, Artist

  James M. Whistler (2012). “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, p.12, Courier Corporation

  19 Copy quote

• As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of color.

  James Whistler

  Art, Color, Sight

  James M. Whistler (2012). “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, p.106, Courier Corporation

  15 Copy quote

• As light fades and the shadows deepen, all petty and exacting details vanish, everything trivial disappears, and I see things as they are in great strong masses: the buttons are lost, but the sitter remains; the sitter is lost, but the shadow remains; the shadow is lost, but the picture remains. And that, night cannot efface from the painter's imagination.

  James Whistler

  Strong, Night, Light

  15 Copy quote

• People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.

  James Whistler

  People, Forgiving, Talent

  9 Copy quote

• Mauve is just pink trying to be purple.

  James Whistler

  Purple, Trying

  16 Copy quote

• We look at a painting to know the painter; it's his company we are after, not his skill.

  James Whistler

  Photography, Skills, Looks

  17 Copy quote

• Art should be independent of all clap-trap - should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it; and that is why I insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and 'harmonies.

  James Whistler

  Art, Independent, Eye

  James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Peter Russell (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of James McNeill Whistler (Illustrated)”, p.620, Delphi Classics

  9 Copy quote

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

  James Whistler

  Glasses, Paint, Should

  Margaret F. MacDonald, James McNeill Whistler (2001). “Palaces in the Night: Whistler in Venice”, p.32, Univ of California Press

  13 Copy quote

• 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 Whistler

  Music, Taken, Player

  James M. Whistler (2012). “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, p.114, Courier Corporation

  16 Copy quote

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

  James Whistler

  Art, Hands, Joy

  James M. Whistler (2012). “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, p.120, Courier Corporation

  14 Copy quote

• Frederic Leighton to James McNeill Whistler: 'My dear Whistler, you leave your pictures in such a sketchy, unfinished state. Why don't you ever finish them?' James McNeill Whistler to Frederic Leighton: 'My dear Leighton, why do you ever begin yours?

  James Whistler

  States, Unfinished, Dear

  13 Copy quote

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

  James Whistler

  Mean, Finishing, Used

  James M. Whistler (2012). “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, p.100, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

• The explanation is quite simple. I wished to be near my mother.

  James Whistler

  Mother, Simple, Birth

  6 Copy quote

• A student of James McNeill Whistler tells the great artist, 'I tend to paint what I see.' Whistler replies, 'Ah! The shock will come when you see what you paint!

  James Whistler

  Artist, Students, Paint

  8 Copy quote

• If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.

  James Whistler

  Communication, Talking, People

  16 Copy quote

• The world is divided into two classes - invalids and nurses.

  James Whistler

  Class, Two, Nurse

  60 Copy quote

• It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.

  James Whistler

  Art, Men, Long

  13 Copy quote

• I am not arguing with you - I am telling you.

  James Whistler

  Arguing

  James M. Whistler (2012). “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, p.57, Courier Corporation

  14 Copy quote

• 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 Whistler

  Life, Attitude, Advice

  "Whistler Stories". Book by Don Carlos Seitz, 1913.

  14 Copy quote

• Truly color is vice! Of course, it can be, and has the right to be one of the finest virtues. Controlled by the strong hand and careful guidance of her Master drawing, color is a splendid Mistress, with a mate worthy of herself, her lover, but her Master likewise, the most magnificent Mistress possible, and the result is evident in all the glorious things that spring from their union.

  James Whistler

  Strong, Spring, Hands

  7 Copy quote

• An artist's career always begins tomorrow

  James Whistler

  Art, Writing, Careers

  9 Copy quote

• 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 Whistler

  Art, Achievement, Quality

  James M. Whistler (2012). “The Gentle Art of Making Enemies”, p.100, Courier Corporation

  7 Copy quote

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