people-from-amsterdam

"Bosboom seemed to have enjoyed my drawing [= watercolor] - He gave me a small visual comment - which I accepted with thanks and will follow. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"My sketch [in watercolor, made in 1861] represents the Hunebed in Tinaarlo in Drenthe, which I drew a few years ago; I have still the intention to paint it [oil-painting after, after his watercolor].. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I will soon have finished another drawing [= watercolor], in the spirit as Den Tessaro [art-seller in Antwerp] wished another one, that is 'airy' and 'thin', with 'lots of space', etc.-. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Lately I have been asking for landscape [paintings] with animals, so I have devoted a lot of time this year sketching cows. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..at least I have the conviction of being honest and I do despise most of all those.. ..alienating works of art [eg. of Seurat ], the disease of our time. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I wonder [interviewer: I hear him saying quite soon] or that line [in the picture he is just working on] doesn't repeat itself. It's more or less the same, isn't it? on both sides, don't you think so? [(interviewer) 'Maybe it is!' - I dare to say; there is no escape; I have to give advice] (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I certainly believe that the simple landscape which seems less impressive is the nature that is most proper to paint. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..when making a painting after a study, it costs me a lot of effort to follow this study very well. One is very much inclined to make something different, so-called better, and that's why people usually get confused. A good outdoor-study has a breath of nature in it which must not be neglected or destroyed. You have to get everything out of that study and not just a third or half. If you can really improve one or the other: a la bonheur, but otherwise it is advisable to follow the study obediently as a guide. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..I wish the Great Master [Nature] will always continue to provide you with benefit. In the meantime, I am assured that you will spent every moment to collect your studies. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Roelofs puts emotion in his paintings, which can sometimes cause a melancholy in those misty, windy landscapes of the north. 'De oevers van het Gein' ['The banks of the river Gein'] are interrupted halfway [in the painting] and the melancholy is floating through the gray mist which rises from the fields, ploughed with blonde stripes. In this canvas the virile and the refined talent of Roelofs are both completely expressed: the horizon is bathing in the air, the depths are illuminated somewhat transparent, the water clear and shiny, is painted beautifully and the reeds along the banks, together with the bright light are contrasting with that hazy green of the trees. In everything you can feel the nearness of the sea and one can give way to dreamy reflections. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..that I went to see Mr Roelofs the day after I received your letter, and he told me that his opinion was that from now on I should concentrate on drawing from nature, i.e. whether plaster or model, but not without guidance from someone who understands it well. And he, and others too, seriously advised me definitely to go and work at a drawing academy, at least for a while, here or in Antwerp or anywhere I could. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Hanging beside me is a landscape study by Roelofs, a pen sketch, but I can't tell you how expressive that simple outline is. Everything is in there. english translation of original letter"

"I repainted the only unsold picture that was [exhibited] in Rotterdam last year. It seems to me that it looks quite pleasing and good now.. .I want you to ask him [the client] seven hundred guilders.. ..for six hundred as lowest price I would be willing to sell it and if you think - knowing him - it would be better to ask that price at once, so do it. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Be something, be yourself; if not, ]then] throw your palette in the fire. Form a school if you wish, but it must come from the inside of you, but you yourself may not belong to any school. (translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Dear Sir Verloren. Today I send you a drawing for your art-reviews. I would liked to have done more for you, but I have many demands for drawings from all sides and I am still very busy with paintings after my studies I made during the last trip. I hope that the drawing will be acceptable. The price is 150 guilders. I am not sure you need a title, call it just simply, 'Bij een Drentsch dorp' (At a village in Drenthe). (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"The drawings [his watercolors] usually succeed in one day or at most two days or they develop difficult and usually don't finish well, then.. ..[I hope] the end will be as good as the beginning. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"That [watercolor] with the Cows has been partially washed out [reducing colors] and that ugly hedge of willow trees has been taken out, and is already doing better, but the paper is not a good quality. I don't know I'll finish it or make a new one. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..it is a masterpiece [painting of Barend Cornelis Koekkoek: 'View on the Woods' 1839, with sizes 176 x 160 cm], a well-executed brave undertaking to imagine something like that on a large scale with such an elaborateness. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Amice, be so good, if it is not too late, to scrape the title 'l'Aprês-Midi' ['Afternoon', title of the work submitted for the exhibition] and simply put on it 'Paysage', for the simple reason.. ..because I chose the moment [in the work] that the sun starts to color and (sic) because there is vapor - many people will wrongly see it as a 'morning'. Mauve will send another aquarelle.. (translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"We didn't really appreciated him. We found him an imitator [early 1960's]. All those little horses of him, they were just the horses of Hendrik Werkman. Not until he started to make those large colorful paintings with skies, he became an original artist. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"That guy is painting blue and yellow horses. He is really a lunatic! (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I love nature, what is not beautiful in nature, there are no ugly things. Sometimes the world oppresses me and then I always go back to nature, the source of all things. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I was kindly received by him [Gerrit Benner] and then he talked, with his crooked nose - because he had fallen off the chest as a child and his nose was crooked. And then he was sniffing all the time. Like: 'Yes, yes, the grass, the grass'. Then he said at some point: 'When you paint outdoors, you work from your feet up to above your head'. Well, just as simple as that, but you have to discover it yourself. You should try it. And that's it, that' it, for sure. That is one of the best lessons I ever got, that one remark by Gerrit Benner. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"In the city you can lose yourself; that's a good thing. It doesn't work in a small city. In Leeuwarden [in Friesland, where Benner lived until c. 1954] you always met yourself again and again. But in Amsterdam there is too much to do, that isn't possible here. It's a beautiful city where I revive. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"It's all about the atmosphere of nature, for sure, but I want the painting to arouse clarity, cheerfulness. When it is finished, then I have to live with it, that's why it must become a pleasant thing. Sun. Clarity. Never white-black, because there are so many shades in between! (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"Don't bother about the result. Throw away your thinking of art, and then become yourself: just walk quietly in yourself, in your own ground."

"Yes ssjjure, it is Fffriesland, seen from an airplane."

"The further I get, the more I stand at the beginning. I'am Benner, but I do not say, I got it. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"A painting is good if it is not finished. Just like ideas. Finished ideas are dead.. .Everything is floating, just as in life – also life will never get ready. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"..in Friesland [up to c. 1954] Benner rarely had the opportunity to see anything of modern painting. The sense of identification of man with nature is the basis of his feeling for life and art. When he speaks about his surrounding world, the painter uses words as 'a miraculous world'. He paints in a colouring of moved simplicity; his colors, especially the primary ones, have a strong purity. His simplification of nature however is not an abstraction, the forms of animals and the landscape have never been abandoned completely.. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"After a long trip hitchhiking with Corneille to Friesland, where we came for the first time after the war [in 1946] we met Gerrit [Benner], a born painter with a Nordic fabulous side in his work. We were received by the Frisian stove with fragrant coffee and I gazed over the meadows with abstract cows, what were his paintings. We immediately called each other by the right name, also later when we met and said: 'Hey old robber, how are you?' (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"When you paint outdoors, you work from your feet up to above your head. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I am not a man of production, I am not a manufacturer. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I paint from my head [about his move from rural Friesland to the city of Amsterdam]. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I love Friesland, but I don't feel myself a Frisian. I am a human being, be called Gerrit Benner, who paints.. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"And I painted on and on, coarsely - not skillful at all and rather clumsy.. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"[ Johannes Bosboom was..] the friend of her first art-works, her source of information and on whom she could fall back, the one who helped her to believe in herself and finally the man who seized her with a firm grip from the drift paths of the young ladies' existence, onto the way of the royal art. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Marie is already 4 weeks in Vorden [Summer of 1875], painting under the guidance of the first landscape painter we have here Bilders. I am curious about the fruits of her labor. I must say that she does the work with great zeal, at the cost of her [white] complexion! She will come back as a half Javanese, I think. I am happy for her that she is given a different guidance than she had now from Bosboom [in The Hague], because that became too much modern for me. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I am glad I have that artistic life in me.. .[I'm] a nobody in my field of art.. .I don't overestimate myself at all, and that's why I can't get that comfort from my work [landscape painting], which the Great [artists] have in their field of art. What else to say! 50 years after my death!! I laughed about it. Do you think they will remember me after only one year? [after her death] Dear heaven! No, that is really my least concern. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"He [ Johannes Warnardus Bilders ] painted – was living in Utrecht, [he] immediately attracted attention and had many ideas, got good prices for that time; and once he thought 'Is this really beautiful, as people say - but the people are crazy or I am - I came to the conclusion – the people are wrong - picked up my things and went to Oosterbeek' [Autumn of 1841, where he thoroughly started to study nature: branches, stems, plants. Etc..] (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek)."

"Our trips in Drenthe [in 1878-79] he [ Johannes Warnardus Bilders ] enjoyed a lot, but Vorden and especially Oosterbeek remained the places he loved most. Drenthe was too new for him. The most beautiful painting he made of it were 'the Hunnebeds', a fusain in my possession. He found back again Hobbema everywhere. (translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek)."

"In the afternoon he [ Johannes Bosboom ] took me to look for it [her first showed painting, ever]. There it was! I thought I was swimming! And next day, our lounge was full of people [at home, with her father], a friend of dad came in and he said: 'I have seen your painting. Very well, indeed. Do you know it just has been sold?' Suddenly it fell silent in the room. Daddy looked at me with surprised eyes. It was my declaration of independence. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"What is life difficult and cumbersome, and what hard work it is to fathom one's own thoughts, feelings really truthfully - to purify and to place them behind each other. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I tell you that I learned from experience. Have you once consulted with yourself – have you once made your decision, don't leave it anymore, otherwise you will become like a weather-cock, and dissatisfied with yourself. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Velmans (1991) summarized evidence for the existence of implicit (preconscious) analysis of input stimuli, implicit processing of semantic content."

"p. 651Abstract. Investigations of the function of consciousness in human information processing have focused mainly on two questions: (1) where does consciousness enter into the information processing sequence and (2) how does conscious processing differ from preconscious and unconscious processing. Input analysis is thought to be initially "preconscious," "pre-attentive," fast, involuntary, and automatic. This is followed by "conscious," "focal-attentive" analysis which is relatively slow, voluntary, and flexible. It is thought that simple, familiar stimuli can be identified preconsciously, but conscious processing is needed to identify complex, novel stimuli. Conscious processing has also been thought to be necessary for choice, learning and memory, and the organization of complex, novel responses, particularly those requiring planning, reflection, or creativity. The present target article reviews evidence that consciousness performs none of these functions. Consciousness nearly always results from focal-attentive processing (as a form of output) but does not itself enter into this or any other form of human information processing. This suggests that the term "conscious process" needs re-examination. Consciousness appears to be necessary in a variety of tasks because they require focal-attentive processing; if consciousness is absent, focal-attentive processing is absent. Viewed from a first-person perspective, however, conscious states are causally effective. First-person accounts are complementary to third-person accounts. Although they can be translated into third-person accounts, they cannot be reduced to them."

"This sketch of how consciousness fits into the wider universe supports a form of non-reductive, Reflexive Monism. Human minds, bodies and brains are embedded in a far greater universe. Individual conscious representations are perspectival. That is, the precise manner in which entities, events and processes are translated into experiences depends on the location in space and time of a given observer, and the exact mix of perceptual, cognitive, affective, social, cultural and historical influences which enter into the 'construction' of a given experience. In this sense, each conscious construction is private, subjective, and unique. Taken together, the contents of consciousness provide a view of the wider universe, giving it the appearance of a 3D phenomenal world. ... However, such conscious representations are not the thing-itself. In this vision, there is one universe (the thing-itself), with relatively differentiated parts in the form of conscious beings like ourselves, each with a unique, conscious view of the larger universe of which it is a part. In so far as we are parts of the universe that, in turn, experience the larger universe, we participate in a reflexive process whereby the universe experiences itself."

"Consider how one silently reads the following sentence: ‘The forest ranger did not permit us to enter the reserve without a permit’. Note that on its first occurrence, the word ‘permit’ was (silently) pro-nounced with the stress on the second syllable (permit), hereas on its second occurrence the stress was on the first syllable (permit)... The syntactic and semantic analysis required to determine the appropriate meaning of the word ‘permit’ must have taken place prior to the allocation of the stress pattern; and this in turn, must have taken place prior to the phonemic image entering awareness."

"Thus, to understand what consciousness is, we need to understand what causes it, what its function(s) may be, how it relates to nonconscious processing in the brain and so on."

"Viewing the brain from the outside, Libet has shown that the experienced intention to perform an act is preceded by cerebral initiation. Why should the experienced decision to veto that intention, or to actively or passively promote its completion, be any different?"