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 wha….

Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there cannot progress..

Frederic Leighton to James McNeill Whistler: 'My dear Whistler, you leave your pictures in such a sketchy, unfinished state. Why don't you ever finis….

A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared..

You shouldn't say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe..

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….

The work of a master reeks not of the sweat of the brow - suggests no effort - and is finished from its beginning..

For art and joy go together, with bold openness, and high head, and ready hand - fearing naught and dreading no exposure..

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 l….

Nature is usually wrong..

Work alone will efface the footsteps of work..

Can't a person be born where they want to be born?.

If other people are going to talk, conversation becomes impossible..

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..

The rare few, who, early in life have rid themselves of the friendship of the many..

The world is divided into two classes - invalids and nurses..

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 sho….

Nature is very rarely right, to such an extent even, that it might almost be said that nature is usually wrong..

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..

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..

Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is, withal selfishly occ….