Robert Henri (1865 - 1929)

[editor's note: one can learn a great deal about Henri from his letters to John Sloan and his 1923 book The Art Spirit, which captured his teachings on art. Unless otherwise noted, the below excerpts come from The Art Spirit.]

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Excerpts from Robert Henri's Writings

Henri to Sloan 14 September 1919

"But anywhere -- even in a studio working from the model to get the thing which hangs together there comes a time when it is better to have the model sit down behind you instead of in front so that you can go ahead. (Para) Anyhow, all work that is worth while has got to be memory work -- even with a model before you in the quiet light of the studio. There has got to come a time when you have what you want to know from the model, when the model had better be sitting behind you than before -- and unless such a time as this does come its not likely the work will get below the surface." *Perlman

From The Art Spirit (source)

"Don't worry about the rejections. Everybody that's good has gone through it. Don't let it matter if your works are not 'accepted' at once. The better or more personal you are the less likely they are of acceptance. Just remember that the object of painting pictures in not simply to get them in exhibitions. It is all very fine to have your pictures hung, but you are painting for yourself, not for the jury. I had many years of rejections."

"We are not here to do what has already been done." "I have little interest in teaching you what I know. I wish to stimulate you to tell me what you know." "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 is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body. In fact it is not only among the artists but among all people that a greater appreciation and respect for the human body should develop. When we respect the nude we will no longer have any shame about it."

"I believe the great artists of the future will use fewer words, copy fewer things, essays will be shorter in words and longer in meaning."

"Dirty brushes and a sloppy palette have dictated the color-tone and key of many a painting. The painter abdicates and the palette becomes master."

"The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art. He needs no one to give him an art education; he is already qualified. He needs but to see pictures with his active mind, look into them for the things that belong to him, and he will find soon enough in himself an art connoisseur and an art lover of the first order."

"No knowledge is so easily found as when it is needed. Teachers have too long stood in the way; have said: 'Go slowly - you want to be an artist before you've learned to draw!' Oh! those long and dreary years of learning to draw! How can a student after the drudgery of it, look at a man or an antique statue with any other emotion than a plumbob estimate of how many lengths of head he has. One's early fancy of man and things must not be forgot."

"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." ... "The model will serve equally for a Rembrandt drawing or for anybody's magazine cover. A genius is one who can see. The others can often 'draw' remarkably well." ... "Those who get their technique first, expecting sight to come to them later, get a technique of a very ready-made order."

"Education as we have it does as much to thwart the recognition of individual experience as lack of education limits it."