Explore Quotes by Robert Henri

Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing.

Lines are results, do not draw them for themselves.

Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.

Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.

Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.

Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy.

Fight with yourself when you paint, not with the model. A student is one who struggles with himself for order.

Everything depends on the attitude of the artist toward his subject. It is essential.

Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers; read, study and think a great deal of life.

You pass people on the street, some are for you, some are not.

Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.

There is weakness in pretending to know more than you know or in stating less than you know.

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressive creature. He becomes interesting to other people. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it and shows there are still more pages possible.

Beauty is an intangible thing; can not be fixed on the surface, and the wear and tear of old age on the body cannot defeat it. Nor will a "pretty" face make it, for "pretty" faces are often dull and empty, and beauty is never dull and it fills all spaces.

You form a society: that limits you. Adopt a name, and you've limited yourself again; draw up a constitution and bylaws and you've made a groove, a rut, that hampers your growth. You think you can fix your course and move straight along it. But sometimes the important thing is to strike out sidewise.

Many things that come into the world are not looked into. The individual says 'My crowd doesn't run that way.' I say, don't run with crowds.

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

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual- become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.

Feel the dignity of a child. Do not feel superior to him, for you are not.

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 tree growing out of the ground is as wonderful today as it ever was. It does not need to adopt new and startling methods.