Robert Henri Quotes

Robert Henri Quotes

We read books. They make us think. It matters very little whether we agree with the books or not.

In certain books - some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother.

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.

Some one has defined a work of art as a “thing beautifully done.” I like it better if we cut away the adverb and preserve the word “done,” and let it stand alone in its fullest meaning. Things are not done beautifully. The beauty is an integral part of their being done.

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

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.

Do whatever you do intensely.

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

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

There is no art without contemplation.

Color is only beautiful when it means something.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Good composition is like a suspension bridge; each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition.

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

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.

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.

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.

The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment.

Concentrate on a single feature – as, build all toward one eye – make all lines lead toward that eye. (Robert Henri)

There is always a commanding and simple line around each head. Learn to have a love for the big simple line.

The undercurrent and motive of all art is an individual man's idea. From each we expect what he has to give. We desire it. It is absolutely necessary for him to give it out.

Sometimes we do grip the concert in a human head, and so hold it that in a way we get a record of it into paint, but the vision and expressing of one day will not do for the next.

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?

The end will be what it will be. The object is intense living, fulfillment; the great happiness in creation.

What we need is more sense of the wonder of life and less of this business of making a picture.

Those who express even a little of themselves never become old-fashioned.

We will be happy if we can get around to the idea that art is not an outside and extra thing; that it is a natural outcome of a state of being; that the state of being is the important thing; that a man can be a carpenter and be a great man.

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

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