62 Quotes by James Whistler

Nature is usually wrong.

The explanation is quite simple. I wished to be near my mother.

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

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 what you paint!

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.

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

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

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 short, as well as his features.

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.