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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.

Robert Henri

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Robert Henri
Age: 64 †
Born: 1865
Born: June 24
Died: 1929
Died: July 12
Artist
Painter
Cincinnati
Ohio
Robert Earle Henri
Robert Henry Cozad
Robert Earl Henri
Henri
Robert Cozad Henri
Fall
Composed
Helping
Conventions
Past
Established
Right
Pictures
Made
Masters
Make
Wonderful
Help
Language

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An artist must first of all respond to his subject, he must be filled with emotion toward that subject and then he must make his technique so sincere, so translucent that it may be forgotten, the value of the subject shining through it.
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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.
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If a certain activity, such as painting, becomes the habitual mode of expression, it may follow that taking up the painting materials and beginning work with them will act suggestively and so presently evoke a flight into the higher state.
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When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature.
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Knowledge of anatomy is a tool like good brushes.
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Art is certainly not a pursuit for anyone who wants to make money.
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I have heard it very often said that an artist does not need intelligence, that his is the province of the soul
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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.
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Do not worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.
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Through art mysterious bonds of understanding and of knowledge are established among men.
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There is only one reason for art in America, and that is that the people of America learn the means of expressing themselves in their own time, and their own land.
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I paint for the sole purpose of magnifying the privilege of being alive.
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It's a wrong idea that a master is a finished person. Masters are very faulty they haven't learned everything and they know it.
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Work always as if you were a master, expect from yourself a masterpiece.
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You pass people on the street, some are for you, some are not.
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The fun of living is that we have to make ourselves, after all.
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If you think of a school drawing while you work, your drawing will look like one.
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Drawing is not following a line on the model, it is drawing your sense of the thing.
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If you work from memory, you are most likely to put in your real feeling.
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Good composition is like a suspension bridge each line adds strength and takes none away... Making lines run into each other is not composition. There must be motive for the connection. Get the art of controlling the observer – that is composition.
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