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James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Application category:
Paint should not be applied thick. It should be like a breath on the surface of a pane of glass. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Appreciation category:
Listen! There was never an artistic period. There was never an art-loving nation. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Art category:
Art happens – no hovel is safe from it, no prince can depend on it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Colour category:
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 Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Colour category:
Mauve? Mauve is just pink trying to be purple. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Colour category:
-to his students on colour...
Someday we shall control the full orchestra. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Commerce category:
-on pricing his work...
I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Criticism category:
To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Criticism category:
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 Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Culture category:
Listen! There never was an artistic period. There never was an Art-loving nation. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Ego category:
As far as painting is concerned there is only Degas and myself. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Emotion category:
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. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Finishing category:
The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow – suggests no effort – and is finished from its beginning. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Finishing category:
A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Harmony category:
Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick and choose... 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 Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Imagination category:
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 Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Imitation category:
The imitator is a poor kind of creature. 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 Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Joy category:
For art and joy go together, with bold openness, and high head, and ready hand – fearing naught and dreading no exposure. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Light category:
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 Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Limitations category:
Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there cannot progress. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Nature category:
Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong... (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Nature category:
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 Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Poetry category:
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 colour. The great musicians knew this. Beethoven and the rest wrote music – simply music; symphony in this key, concerto or sonata in that... (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Portraiture category:
To me it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait? (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Portraiture category:
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 Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Portraiture category:
-to a sitter's complaint that his portrait was not a great work of art...
Perhaps not, but then you can't call yourself a great work of nature. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Taste category:
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 Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Vision category:
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
James Abbot McNeill Whistler - From the Work category:
The work of the master reeks not of the sweat of the brow – suggests no effort – and is finished from its beginning. (James Abbot McNeill Whistler)
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