Quotes from James McNeill Whistler

Wilde: I wish I'd said that.Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will.

Art should be independent of all claptrap—should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with it.

My advice to the women's clubs of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias.

To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labor, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

Two and two the mathematician continues to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter—perfect in its bud as in its bloom—with no reason to explain its presence—no mission to fulfill—a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist—a puzzle to the botanist—an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.

An artist's career always begins tomorrow.

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

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

Two and two continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

Oscar Wilde: "I wish I had said that." Whistler: "You will, Oscar; you will.

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

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.

I can't tell you if genius is hereditary, because heaven has granted me no offspring.

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

Nature is usually wrong.

Two and two continue to make four, in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five.

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he may sit on the piano.