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
Can't a person be born where they want to be born?
A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared.
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?
The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow - suggests no effort - and is finished from its beginning.
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!
Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong...
Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artists is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful - as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chaos glorious harmony
We look at a painting to know the painter; it's his company we are after, not his skill.
Had silicon been a gas, I would have been a major general
You shouldn't say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.
It would have been called provincial and barbarous; it would have been cited as an incident of low civilization to confuse such art.
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.
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.
If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible.