Top 160 Robert Henri Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”

— Robert Henri

Featured in: Painting Quotes

2. “We are not here to do what has already been done.”

— Robert Henri

3. “Those who cannot begin do not finish.”

— Robert Henri

4. “The great painter has something to say. He does not paint men, landscapes, or furniture; but an idea.”

— Robert Henri

5. “Color is only beautiful when it means something.”

— Robert Henri

6. “When the motives of artists are profound, when they are at their work as a result of deep consideration, when they believe in the importance of what they are doing, their work creates a stir in the world.”

— Robert Henri

7. “Realize that a drawing is not a copy. It is a construction in very different materials. A drawing is an invention.”

— Robert Henri

8. “Do whatever you do intensely.”

— Robert Henri

9. “Why do we love the sea? It is because it has some potent power to make us think things we like to think.”

— Robert Henri

10. “Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.”

— Robert Henri

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

— Robert Henri

12. “Educate yourself. Don’t let me educate you.”

— Robert Henri

13. “To be free, to be happy and to be fruitful, can only be attained through sacrifice of many common but overestimated things.”

— Robert Henri

14. “Painting should never look as if it were done with difficulty, however difficult it may actually have been.”

— Robert Henri

15. “Art when really understood is the province of every human being. It is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing.”

— Robert Henri

16. “Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life’s experience.”

— Robert Henri

17. “Keep a bad drawing until by study you have found out why it is bad.”

— Robert Henri

18. “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.”

— Robert Henri

19. “Good composition is like a suspension bridge – each line adds strength and takes none away.”

— Robert Henri

20. “The real artist’s work is a surprise to himself.”

— Robert Henri

21. “By my teaching I hope to inspire you to personal activity and to present your vision.”

— Robert Henri

22. “The most vital things in the look of a landscape endure only for a moment. Work should be done from memory; memory of that vital moment.”

— Robert Henri

23. “There is nothing more entertaining than to have a frank talk with yourself. Few do it-frankly. Educating yourself is getting acquainted with yourself.”

— Robert Henri

24. “Each sensation is precious, protect it, cherish it, keep it. Never give it away. You must develop that balance which allows all of the world to come in to you, and only that which you have expressed in your art to move back out again into the world.”

— Robert Henri

25. “Art appreciation, like love, cannot be done by proxy.”

— Robert Henri

26. “Knowledge of anatomy is a tool like good brushes.”

— Robert Henri

27. “Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends on those who go on anyway.”

— Robert Henri

28. “A Curve does not exist in its full power until contrasted with a straight line.”

— Robert Henri

29. “Art is an extension of language – an expression of sensations too subtle for words.”

— Robert Henri

30. “In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don’t believe any real artist cares whether what he does is ‘art’ or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?”

— Robert Henri

31. “You can do anything you want to do. What is rare is this actual wanting to do a specific thing: wanting it so much that you are practically blind to all other things, that nothing else will satisfy you.”

— Robert Henri

32. “Paint what you feel. Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you.”

— Robert Henri

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

— Robert Henri

34. “All education must be self-education.”

— Robert Henri

35. “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.”

— Robert Henri

36. “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.”

— Robert Henri

37. “The ignorant are to be found as much among the educated as among the uneducated.”

— Robert Henri

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

— Robert Henri

39. “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.”

— Robert Henri

40. “There are forms that can only be seen when you are near a painting, others only appear when you are far away.”

— Robert Henri

41. “Be a warhorse for work and enjoy even the struggle against defeat.”

— Robert Henri

42. “Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men.”

— Robert Henri

43. “If you do not act on a suggestion at first, you grow dull to its message.”

— Robert Henri

44. “Finished persons are very common – people who are closed up, quite satisfied that there is little more to learn.”

— Robert Henri

45. “Art is, after all, only a trace – like a footprint which shows that one has walked bravely and in great happiness.”

— Robert Henri

46. “A common defect of modern art study is that too many students do not know why they draw.”

— Robert Henri

47. “Beauty is no material thing. Beauty cannot be copied. Beauty is the sensation of pleasure on the mind of the seer. No thing is beautiful. But all things await the sensitive and imaginative mind that may be aroused to pleasurable emotion at sight of them. This is beauty.”

— Robert Henri

48. “There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body.”

— Robert Henri

49. “I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.”

— Robert Henri

50. “Cherish your own emotions and never undervalue them.”

— Robert Henri