James Whistler Quotes
Enjoy the top 43 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by James Whistler.

“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 —
Work alone will efface the footsteps of work.
— James Whistler
“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.”
— James Whistler
“An artist's career always begins tomorrow.”
— James Whistler
— James Whistler
“The rare few, who, early in life have rid themselves of the friendship of the many.”
— James Whistler
I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.
— James Whistler
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 Whistler
— James Whistler
“I am not arguing with you - I am telling you.”
— James Whistler
— James Whistler
— James Whistler
“It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.”
— James Whistler
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
“We look at a painting to know the painter; it's his company we are after, not his skill.”
— James Whistler
I always ask at once, 'Do you drink?' and if she says 'No,' I bow politely and say I am sorry but I fear she will not suit. All good cooks drink.
— James Whistler
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
— James Whistler
— James Whistler
Paint should not be applied thick. It should be like a breath on the surface of a pane of glass.
— James Whistler
“Mauve is just pink trying to be purple.”
— James Whistler
— James Whistler
“Listen! There was never an artistic period. There was never an art-loving nation.”
— James Whistler
It is for the artist ... in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.
— James Whistler
— James Whistler
“The explanation is quite simple. I wished to be near my mother.”
— James Whistler
— James Whistler
People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.
— James Whistler
If silicon had been a gas I should have been a major-general.
— James Whistler
— James Whistler
— James Whistler
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
A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared.
— James Whistler
Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there cannot progress.
— James Whistler
“Can't a person be born where they want to be born?”
— James Whistler
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