Jan Mankes

".. a crow, a quick, tame animal with immaculate feathering walks around here at home; I hope to be able to benefit a lot of it, because I love crows so much. The surroundings here [of ] are very different than around Delft; more forest, sometimes even heath, often overgrown with beautiful, white birch trees. I have not yet come to work outside however, because, when I think of my crow I walk home again, but may be it change, who knows. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..drivers, docker and skippers.. ..at the canal the whole day they are loading peat and every horse stands still for half an hour [his time for sketching]. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"My surprise and thanks are great.. ..and what a package. What attracts me most of all, yes, really gives me great joy [is] that little book ['Wild birds at home', by photographer Charles Kirk, London. 1906] with birds, really something to look forward to. There are pictures in [of birds] which arouse more wonderful thoughts than all real art. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Yet I would like to get acquainted with Japanese drawings or paintings.. ..especially as they appreciate birds so strongly and therefore already they are my friends. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"They say that he [ Floris Verster ] has made beautiful impressionist things in the past, afterwards he suddenly has achieved a tender drawing; in this time for example he painted dead rooks, so intimately pure and at the same time monumental, that it seemed to me the best what was made here [in the Netherlands] about that time. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"For example, in recent times I was looking to avoid in my works the greasy parts, which in the dark places [of the painting] are obstructing the material expression so heavily to appear. Rubbing with pumice and (the use of a lot of) oil I dispensed and then, look... like in my older works all details seem to appear much better, like in all the feathers of the crow; The job now has become much bigger, but no problem. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"It [an owl] is like coming from a fairy-tale, something royal fragile, something that you would never want to touch, Yes to me it has become fully absolute because of that silver breast. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"While holding a keen eye on all the yelling at the markets, let's prefer to stay away from many of those things that attract at times other painters - if necessary, unknown - to be able to continue the work quietly at times. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..[that] the landscape will become directly or indirectly an object of study for me.. (a month later:) ..So I have planned the project – already my intention for some years, as you know - I (almost) finished the painting of Woudsterweg.. .There you have it already.. .a landscape, Amice. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Besides, the entire impressionism usually presented merely the things from the outside. And sometimes they did it so perfectly that a seventeen[the] century painting looks clumsy, as far as seeing is concerned."

"..the distressing aspect of [[w:Vincent van Gogh|Vincent [van Gogh],]] who often presents things so tightly and so painfully, you can not find in my work (character), and I don't search for it. The spiritual aspect is the essence in Vincent's work, and the pictorial is subordinate to that.. .Now I feel myself most comfortable (unfortunately or happily) with an extreme refinement of colors and form; it always (although I sometimes want it differently) ends with that: to give [present] what I feel as my greatest happiness. Now it might be possible that this will remain the highest goal for me, not so bad; every little bird sings its own song.. .Following Vincent and being no Vincent in the mind (may be this is desirable for nobody) would be absurd and criminal."

"However, I gradually start to appreciate the Japanese print art [in wood prints] as a whole less than a small year ago. We can discuss it later, sometimes. For the time being I can say that the external elegance and skills are often not supported by a deep inner empathy with the depicted things. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I have finished a fairly large painting, the goat; I sometimes spoke to you about my plan. I believe it has become a real painting, and very complete. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"The lazy, carbon-black mutt, huddled together and missing all kinds of grace has, just because of that my sympathy. Because outward appearance doesn't matter here it is so beautiful and true but also so difficult, that it seems to me almost impossible to reproduce the beast in such a way that not everybody will say: Yuck, what a nasty black beast.. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I really love Thijs Maris and his works possess for me a peculiar charm.. .You will certainly love Thijs Maris yourself and then you know.. ..how lovely it is to walk along in his childlike ardour. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"The miracle has come. So suddenly and so directly that I still cann't comprehend it myself. I'm engaged. My girl is the pastor of and her name is Annie Zernike. You will get to know her and then you will realize what a great and delicious thing this means to me. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I wanted to paint crows in a big spot of lonely black with a digger head and paws. But stronger was nature which forced me to make a beast, sparkling of blue and purple, a subdued pleasure for the eyes. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"You know the tender side of my work. That side was always dominating me. I feel the joy of that tenderness most strongly when I think of a finch-nest with cobweb and lichen on a May-morning. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"What dusty and sober can a day in August be. You would like to take yourself away on such a day because of all the misery that is trying to penetrate you. But you know: the serene evening is coming and the lapwing sounds over the low fields. You are walking in the dew and see the backs of the cows and the steaming trees. and the thought of all these things blesses that fierce August Day, and you don't start to grumble and scold, or try to change or improve it, but you are seeking a quiet, shadowy corner somewhere on a deserted place here and there and you wait and know that it will come. Nature doesn't hide anything, but gives everything; and those days in August, they also have to get a place in our spiritual community. But the nights with winter-storms, they will also come and the lovely mornings and evenings in May, which are nothing but profundity. Only that depth, which we will get by experiencing all extremes, can create true friendship. Shall fate allow us to walk through all these phases? (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..Painting never means just never picturing the material things, but it is a psychological function, an expression of how his mind [of the artist] responds to things. So that is quite a difference with: painting is showing the beauty of things. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"A young painter whose name was so far completely unknown to us, but now already a notable appearance.. .And curious is the way the surfaces - which are bordered by lines and filled - sometimes remind of.. ..Perhaps the former activity of Mankes, who has worked on a glass-painting studio, is in this way influencing his painting style. Anyway, this work is certainly special. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Dutch most silent painter.. .This silence is caused by balanced compositions and subdued use of color, as well as a hardly visible brushstroke. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"the nearness of the forest and the wideness of the fields.. ..long-lasting marches.. .Behind and next to the house a large old garden with a chicken coop, a ditch for the geese and a barn for the goats, because father would become a farmer. This presented Jan the most precious objects to paint. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I don't know of any other painter in The Netherlands for whom painting has remained so extremely just means, without ever becoming a goal. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Never ever a young painter has got greater and more unselfish support for his work.. ..the owl, in so many [of his] paintings on the top of the folding-screen, the little kestrel, the white mice, the pike! It was Pauwels, always Pauwels [Jan Mankes' maceneas, living in The Hague] who took care of that, who first sent them to Friesland, and later to Eerbeek [where Jan Mankes lived his last years].. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"But precisely this I admire so strongly in the imagination of animals by Mankes, he saw the animal so tenderly, and at the same time so full of his own animal good-right and delightful seclusion, not as a spiritual or aesthetic pretext, but as a beautiful truth and divine perfection. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Jan had a great love and knowledge of birds. How poetic and faithful he painted them to the very essence: crows, thrushes, owls, magpies and goldfinches. His father had taught him the first knowledge of birds, on which he himself continued with the help of a Zeiss binoculars and [[w:Theo Thijssen|[Theo] Thijssen's]] unsurpassed [book] 'Vogeljaar'. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"He frequently visited my church [in , Anne was the new pastor there, and the first female pastor in The Netherlands!] for quite some time [c. 1912]; by his appearance, so different from that of the sons of the local farmers, I immediately noticed him. My woman sexton - she knew everything about everyone - could only tell me that he had lived in for some years and was painting now and then. But she didn't know what he was making, she thought it was nothing special.. .But nobody had ever heard of the painter Jan Mankes. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"The young crow (1918) was sitting outside on his bed in the morning where I held his flabby legs, so that Jan could draw him. Especially the smallest square block [in the drawing], where he makes the crow catching a mosquito, Jan liked a lot. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Mankes' work is filled with the idea that God can be known in nature and the seemingly humble things around us. During the first decades of the twentieth century [in The Netherlands] this idea became fashionable within circles of free-thinking Protestants and religiously colored doctrines such as theosophy. The power of Mankes' painting is that this idea is not imposed on the image, but it mixes rather stealthily and completely natural with realism in his landscapes. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"What it's all about in Mankes' landscapes is the human relationship to the larger order of nature and cosmos; they allow us human beings to experience our physical limitation, but at the same time our insignificance within God's creation. Paintings like 'Woudsterweg' and 'Maannacht' are furthermore filled with the consoling awareness of being part of this. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"