James Whistler
James Whistler
James Abbott McNeill Whistlerwas an American artist, active during the American Gilded Age and based primarily in the United Kingdom. He was averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, and was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail. The symbol was apt, for it combined both aspects of his personality—his art was characterized by a...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth11 July 1834
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
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.
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?
Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occupied with her own perfection only - having no desire to teach.
Paint should not be applied thick. It should be like a breath on the surface of a pane of glass.
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?
Mauve is just pink trying to be purple.
The world is divided into two classes - invalids and nurses.
The rare few, who, early in life have rid themselves of the friendship of the many.
If silicon had been a gas I should have been a major-general.
Art happens-no hovel is safe from it, no prince may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about.
An artist's career always begins tomorrow
Listen! There was never an artistic period. There was never an art-loving nation.