Excerpts from Robert Henri's "The Art Spirit" (1923)

"Cafferty," Robert Henri, oil on canvas (1926)

The work of the art student is no light matter. Few have the courage and stamina to see it through. You have to make up your mind to be alone in many ways. We like sympathy and we like to be in company. It is easier than going it alone. But alone one gets acquainted with himself, grows up and on, not stopping with the crowd. It costs to do this. If you succeed somewhat you may have to pay for it as well as enjoy it all your life. (12)

An art student must be a master from the beginning, that is, he must be master of such as he has. By being now master of such as he has there is promise that he will be master in the future. (12)

A work of art which inspires us comes from no quibbling or uncertain man. It is that manifest of a very positive nature in great enjoyment, and at the very moment the work was done.

It is not enough to have thought great things before doing the work. The brush stroke at the moment of contact carries inevitably the exact state of being of the artist at that exact moment into the work, and there it is, to be seen and read by those who can read such signs, and to be read later by the artist himself, with perhaps some surprise, as a revelation of himself. (13)

The sketch hunter has delightful says of drifting about among people, in and out of the city, going anywhere, everywhere, stopping as long as he likes—no need to reach any point, moving in any direction following the call of interests. (13)

Do some great work, Son! Don’t try to paint good landscapes. Try to paint canvases that will show how interesting landscape looks to you—your pleasure in the thing. Wit.

There are lots of people who can make sweet colors, nice tones, nice shapes of landscape, all done in nice broad and intelligent-looking brushwork.

Courbet showed in every work what a man he was, what a head and heart he had. (14)

If the artist is alive in you, you may meet Greco nearer than many people, also Plato, Shakespeare, the Greeks.

In certain books—some way in the first few paragraphs you know that you have met a brother. (16)

Work with great speed. Have your energies alert, up and active. Finish as quickly as you can. There is no virtue in delaying. Get the greatest possibility of expression in the larger masses first. Then the features in their greatest simplicity in concordance with and dependent on the mass. Do it all in one sitting if you can. In one minute if you can. There is no virtue in delaying. But do not pass from the work on mass to features until all that can be said with the larger forms has been said—no matter how long it may take, no matter if accomplishment of the picture may be delayed from one to many days. Hold to this principle that the greatest drawing, the greatest expression, the greatest completion, the sense of all contained, lies in what can be done through the larger masses and the larger gestures. (23)

When we know the relative value of things we can do anything with them. We can build with then without destroying them. Under such conditions they are enhanced by coming into contact with each other. The study of art is the study of the relative value of things. The factors of a work of art cannot be used constructively until their relative values are known. (23)

Work should be done from memory. The memory is of that vital moment. During that moment there is a correlation of the factors of that look. This correlation does not continue. New arrangements, greater or less, replace them as mood changes. The special order has to be retained in memory….All work done from the subject thereafter must be no more than data-gathering. The subject is now in another mood. A new series of relations has been established….The picture must nor become a patchwork of parts of various moods. The original mood must be held to. (24)

All good work is done from memory whether the model is still present or not. (24).

With the model present, there is coupled with the distracting changes in its organization which must not be followed, the advantage of seeing, nevertheless, the material—the raw material one might say—of which the look was made. (24-25)

I think it is safe to say that the kind of seeing and the kind of thinking done by one who works with the model always before him is entirely different from the kind of seeing and thinking done by one who is about to list the presence of the model and will have to continue his work from the knowledge he gained in the intimate presence.

The latter type of worker generally manifests a mental activity of much higher order than his apparently safe and secure confrère. He must know and he must know that he knows before the model is snatched away from him. He studies for information. (25)

In the old days, when a drawing was begun on Monday and finished on Saturday the student who did not know now to begin a drawing “began” one a week and spent a week finishing the thing he has not known how to begin. A thing that has not been begun cannot be finished. (27)

By this I mean that you will make an organization in paint on canvas; not a reproduction, but an organization, subject to the natural laws of paint and canvas, which will have an order in it kin to that order which has so impressed you in nature—in the look of a face, in the look of a landscape. (28)