I wouldn't go across the street to see a Bouguereau. His pictures look false; he does not get the truth of what he wishes to represent. His light is not outdoor light; his works are waxy and artificial. They are extremely near being frauds.
— Winslow Homer
The life that I have chosen gives me my full hours of enjoyment for the balance of my life: the sun will not rise, or set, without my notice and thanks.
You can't get along without a knowledge of the principles and rules governing the influence of one color upon another. A mechanic might as well try to get along without tools.
With the duckets that I now have safe, I think I will retire at 66 years of age, praise God, in good health.
I don't want a lot of people nosing round my studio and bothering me. I don't want to see them at all. Let the dealers have all that bother.
When will you learn that the time to buy a thing is when you find what you want? If you go back the next year and try to get more, they will try to sell you something else.
If a man wants to be an artist, he must never look at pictures.
You will see - in the future, I will live by my watercolors.
I decide to go direct to Key West... I know the place quite well, and it's near the points in Florida that I wish to visit. I have an idea at present of doing some work but do not know how long that will last.
This making studies and then taking them home to use them is only half right. You get composition, but you lose freshness; you miss the subtle and, to the artist, the finer characteristics of the scene itself.
Do not think that I have stopped painting, for at any moment, I am liable to paint a good picture.
Anything written or printed under a print or picture takes the attention from it and, if it is very black or white in any marked degree, will utterly destroy its beauty.
It is certainly a most tremendous and unprecedented honor and distinction that I have received from Pittsburgh. Let us hope that it is not too late in my case to be of value to American art in something that I may yet possibly do from this encouragement.
Talent! There's no such thing as talent. What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous hard work in the right way.
A man is known by his works. That I have heard at many a funeral.
Mr. C. Klackner has for sale four etchings etched by myself, at the expense of two years' time & hard work - 'The Life Line,' 'Peril on the Sea,' 'Eight Bells,' 'Mending Tears,' - all of which are very good and should have been put forward long ago, but C. Klackner is waiting for me to die, is my idea of the matter.
I prefer every time a picture composed and painted outdoors.
Every condition must be favorable, or I do not work and will not.
I do not care to put out any ideas for pictures. They are too valuable and can be appropriated by any art student, defrauding me out of a possible picture.
Only once in the last thirty years have I made a duplicate, and that was a watercolor from my oil picture now owned by the Layton Art Gallery, Milwaukee, called 'Hark! the Lark.'
The slavery at Bufford's was too fresh in my recollection to let me care to bind myself again. From the time that I took my nose off that lithographic stone, I have had no master, and never shall have any.
The sun will not rise or set without my notice, and thanks.
