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
Work alone will efface the footsteps of work.
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.
The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.
I maintain that two and two would continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.
A student of James McNeill Whistler tells the great artist, 'I tend to paint what I see.' Whistler replies, 'Ah! The shock will come when you see what you paint!
The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow - suggests no effort - and is finished from its beginning.
I am not arguing with you - I am telling you.
The explanation is quite simple. I wished to be near my mother.
Nature is usually wrong.
People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.
Industry in art is a necessity - not a virtue - and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work.
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.
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.
Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong...