Quotes from Robert Henri

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.

The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art.

Know what the old masters did. Know how they composed their pictures, but do not fall into the conventions they established. These conventions were right for them, and they are wonderful. They made their language. You make yours. All the past can help you.

There are mighty few people who think what they think they think.

The pursuit of happiness ... is the greatest feat man has to accomplish.

It takes great wit and interest and energy to be happy. The pursuit of happiness is a great activity. One must be open and alive. It is the greatest feat man has to accomplish.

Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money.

Cherish your emotions and never undervalue them.

All outward success, when it has value, is but the inevitable result of an inward success of full living, full play and enjoyment of one's faculties.

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.

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.

No work of Art is really ever finished. They only stop at good places.

When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature.

Students work in schools making life studies for years, win prizes for life studies and find in the end that they know practically nothing of the human figure. They have acquired the ability to copy.

If you think of a school drawing while you work, your drawing will look like one.

Completion does not depend on material representation. The work is done when that special thing has been said.

The object isn't to make art, it's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.

Do whatever you do intensely.

The sketch hunter moves through life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.

Pretend you are dancing or singing a picture. A worker or painter should enjoy his work, else the observer will not enjoy it.

Art is an outsider, a gypsy over the face of the earth.

It is the common defect of modern art study. Too many students do not know why they draw.

It is harder to see than it is to express. The whole value of art rests in the artist's ability to see well into what is before him.

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