Art should be independent of all clap-trap—should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like.
1890, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, “The Picture Defended”, in Sheridan Ford, editor, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, New York: Frederick Stokes & Brother, pages 69–70