Mcneill Whistler

Famous quotes containing the words mcneill whistler, mcneill and/or whistler:

    Ruskin’s counsel: The labour of two days ... is that for which you ask two hundred guineas?
    Whistler: No: I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime.
    —James Mcneill Whistler (1834–1903)

    If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.
    —James Mcneill Whistler (1834–1903)

    It is known that Whistler when asked how long it took him to paint one of his “nocturnes” answered: “All of my life.” With the same rigor he could have said that all of the centuries that preceded the moment when he painted were necessary. From that correct application of the law of causality it follows that the slightest event presupposes the inconceivable universe and, conversely, that the universe needs even the slightest of events.
    Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)