Whistler

Famous quotes containing the word 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)

    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)

    Mr. Whistler always spelt art, and we believe still spells it, with a capital “I.”
    Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)