Robert Henri quotes:

Good composition is like a suspension bridge - each line adds strength and takes none away.

Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.

Good composition is like a suspension bridge - each line adds strength and takes none away."

I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.

All the past up to a moment ago is your legacy. You have a right to it.

Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy.

There is nothing more entertaining than to have a frank talk with yourself. Few do it-frankly. Educating yourself is getting acquainted with yourself.

In a tree there is a spirit of life, a spirit of growth and a spirit of holding its head up.

Your painting is the marking of your progression into nature, a sensation of something you see way beyond the two pretty colors over there. Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit.

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.

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.

Renoir had not only a great interest in human character, in human feeling, but had also a great love for the people he painted.

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

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

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.

In great art there is no beginning and end in point of time. All time is comprehended.

You form a society: that limits you. Adopt a name, and you've limited yourself again; draw up a constitution and bylaws and you've made a groove, a rut, that hampers your growth. You think you can fix your course and move straight along it. But sometimes the important thing is to strike out sidewise.

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.

There are forms that can only be seen when you are near a painting, others only appear when you are far away.

Art is an outsider, a gypsy over the face of the earth.

The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art.

A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw.

The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

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.

A mountain seen in the haze of distance must nevertheless look a solid heavy mountain.

The pursuit of happiness...is the greatest feat man has to accomplish.

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it.

An artist must have imagination. An artist who does not use his imagination is a mechanic.

In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?

Houses, housetops, like human beings have wonderful character. The lives of housetops. The wear of the seasons. The country is beautiful, young, growing things. The majesty of trees. The backs of tenement houses are living documents.

Self-education only produces expressions of self.

The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.

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.

Do whatever you do intensely.

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.

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.

It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.

A Curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted with a straight line.

A drawing should be a verdict on the model. Don't confuse a drawing with a map.

A GREAT PAINTER will know a great deal about how he did it, but still he will say, "How did I do it?

A picture should be the expression of the will of the painter.

A weak background is a deadly thing.

After all, the goal is not making art. It is living a life. Those who live their lives will leave the stuff that is really art.

All education must be self-education.

All is as beautiful as we think it.

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.

All outward success, when it has value, is but the inevitable result of an inward success of full living, full play and enjoyment of one's faculties.

All real works of art look as though they were done in joy.

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.

An artist's job is to surprise himself. Use all means possible.

Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life's experience.

Art is an extension of language - an expression of sensations too subtle for words.

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

Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong.

Art is, after all, only a trace "? like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness.

Art need not be intended. It comes inevitably as the tree from the root, the branch from the trunk, the blossom from the twig. None of these forget the present in looking backward or forward. They are occupied wholly with the fulfillment of their own existence.

Art tends toward balance, order, judgment of relative values, the laws of growth, the economy of living "? very good things for anyone to be interested in.

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.

Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers; read, study and think a great deal of life...

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

Beauty is an intangible thing; can not be fixed on the surface, and the wear and tear of old age on the body cannot defeat it. Nor will a "pretty" face make it, for "pretty" faces are often dull and empty, and beauty is never dull and it fills all spaces.

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.

Because we are saturated with life, because we are human, our strongest motive is life, humanity; and the stronger the motive back of the line the stronger, and therefore more beautiful, the line will be.

By my teaching I hope to inspire you to personal activity and to present your vision.

Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.

Color is only beautiful when it means something.

Colors are beautiful when they are significant.

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

Concentrate on a single feature - as, build all toward one eye - make all lines lead toward that eye.

Count on big lines to express your ideas.

Develop your visual memory. Draw everything you have drawn from the model from memory as well.

Do not expect pictures to say the expected; some of the best will have surprises for you, which will, at first, shock you.

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.

Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.

Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.

Don't stop to paint the material, but push on to give the spirit.

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.

Don't worry about your originality. You couldn't get rid of it even if you wanted to. It will stick with you and show up for better or worse in spite of all you or anyone else can do.

Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing.

Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure.

Each sensation is precious, protect it, cherish it, keep it. Never give it away. You must develop that balance which allows all of the world to come in to you, and only that which you have expressed in your art to move back out again into the world.

Educate yourself. Don't let me educate you

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

Feel the dignity of a child. Do not feel superior to him, for you are not.

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

Find out what you really like if you can. Find out what is really important to you. Then sing your song. You will have something to sing about and your whole heart will be in the singing.

Finished persons are very common - people who are closed up, quite satisfied that there is little more to learn

Get the few main lines and see what lines they call out.

Has your drawing the meaning you saw in the model at first?

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.

I am interested in the size of your intention. It is better to overstate the important than to understate it.

I can think of no greater happiness than to be clear-sighted and know the miracle when it happens. And I can think of no more real life than the adventurous one of living and liking and exclaiming the things of one's own time.

I have heard it very often said that an artist does not need intelligence, that his is the province of the soul

I paint for the sole purpose of magnifying the privilege of being alive.

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.

If the artist's will is not strong he will see all kinds of unessential things.

If you do not act on a suggestion at first, you grow dull to its message.

If you think of a school drawing while you work, your drawing will look like one.

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

It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him.

It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him. ... The model will serve equally for a Rembrandt drawing or for anybody's magazine cover. A genius is one who can see. The others can often 'draw' remarkably well. ... Those who get their technique first, expecting sight to come to them later, get a technique of a very ready-made order.

It seems to me that before a man tries to express anything to the world he must recognize in himself an individual, a new one, very distinct from others.

It's a wrong idea that a master is a finished person. Masters are very faulty; they haven't learned everything and they know it.

Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad.

Knowledge of anatomy is a tool like good brushes.

Let every student enter the school with this advice. No matter how good the school is, his education is in his own hands. All education must be self education.

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development.

Lines are results, do not draw them for themselves.

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

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.

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.

Many things that come into the world are not looked into. The individual says 'My crowd doesn't run that way.' I say, don't run with crowds.

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

Paint like a fiend when the idea possesses you.

Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.

Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you.

Painting should never look as if it were done with difficulty, however difficult it may actually have been.

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...