James Whistler

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

— James Whistler

I always ask at once, 'Do you drink?' and if she says 'No,' I bow politely and say I am sorry but…

— James Whistler

Nature is usually wrong.

— James Whistler

Mauve is just pink trying to be purple.

— James Whistler

Art is a goddess of dainty thought, reticent of habit, abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to better others. She is,…

— James Whistler

The world is divided into two classes - invalids and nurses.

— James Whistler

An artist's career always begins tomorrow

— James Whistler

To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say…

— James Whistler

It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.

— James Whistler

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

— James Whistler

I remember that at one time I always made a drawing before going to bed!! - Of myself I mean - though…

— James Whistler

You shouldn't say it is not good. You should say, you do not like it; and then, you know, you're perfectly safe.

— James Whistler

As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of sight and the subject-matter has nothing to do with…

— James Whistler

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

— James Whistler

As light fades and the shadows deepen, all petty and exacting details vanish, everything trivial disappears, and I see things as they…

— James Whistler

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

— James Whistler

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

— James Whistler

Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the…

— James Whistler

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

— James Whistler

To say to the painter that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that he…

— James Whistler

Over and over again did the Attorney-General cry out aloud, in the agony of his cause, 'What is to become of painting…

— James Whistler

Listen! There was never an artistic period. There was never an art-loving nation.

— James Whistler

The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it…

— James Whistler

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

— James Whistler

Frederic Leighton to James McNeill Whistler: 'My dear Whistler, you leave your pictures in such a sketchy, unfinished state. Why don't you…

— James Whistler