"It seems to me that before a man tries to express anything to the world he must recognize in himself an individual, a new one, very distinct from others...Most people, either by training or inheritance, count themselves at the start as "no good," or "second rate" or "just like anyone else," whereas in everyone there is the great mystery; every single person in the world has evidence to give of his own individuality, providing he has acquired the full power to make clear this evidence.
...For instance, contrast the work of (John Henry) Twachtman and Winslow Homer. The same scene presented by these two men would be not an identical geographical spot but an absolutely different expression of personality. Twachtman saw the seas bathed in mists, the rocks softened with vapor. Winslow Homer looked straight through the vapor at the hard rock; he found in the leaden heaviness a most tremendously forceful idea. It was not the sea or the rock to either of these men, but their own individual attitude toward the beauty or the force of nature. Each man must take the material that he finds at hand, see that in it there are the big truths of life, the fundamentally big forces, and then express in his art whatever is the cause of his pleasure."
- Robert Henri (American artist and teacher), The Art Spirit, 1923
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| John Henry Twachtman |
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| Winslow Homer |
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