James Whistler Quotes

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

People will forgive anything but beauty and talent. So I am doubly unpardonable.

If silicon had been a gas I should have been a major-general.

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.

Work alone will efface the footsteps of work.

Can’t a person be born where they want to be born?

We look at a painting to know the painter; it’s his company we are after, not his skill.

I am not arguing with you – I am telling you.

An artist’s career always begins tomorrow

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 is for the artist to do something beyond this.

Mauve is just pink trying to be purple.

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.