Painters From The Netherlands

"Here's a list of Dutch paintings intended for the [Paris] Salon: - Israëls, an old man: ..an old man sits in a hut by the fireplace in which a small piece of peat barely glows in the twilight. For it's a dark hut the old man sits in, an old hut with a small window with a little white curtain. His dog, who's grown old with him, sits beside him – those two old creatures look at each other, they look each other in the eye, the dog and the old man. And meanwhile the man takes his tobacco box out of his trousers pocket and he fills his pipe like that in the twilight. Nothing else – the twilight, the quiet, the loneliness of those two old creatures, man and dog, the familiarity of those two, that old man thinking.. ..that face – a melancholy, satisfied, submissive expression.. .I definitely know of no other painting than this Israëls that can stand up to Millet's Death and the woodcutter, that one can see at the same time, on the other hand I know of no other painting that could stand up to this Israëls than Millet's Death and the woodcutter, no other painting that one can see at the same time as this Israëls. Moreover, I feel in my mind an irresistible desire to bring together that painting by Israëls and that other by Millet and make them complement each other.. .Its a fabulous Israëls,."

"Is there a difference between a Jewish sea and a non-Jewish sea? What is a Jewish way of painting? (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"What a pleasure is it to see such a 'Frans Hals' [because the painter Frans Hals was also painting in a loose brush-technique] - it is completely different from the paintings - there are so many of them - where everything has been smoothed out in the same painstaking way.. ..[Jozef] Israëls has a much healthier and more solid technique, like in that very old canvas [1856!] 'De visser van Zandvoort' with beautiful clair-obscure, then the technique of those who are at every spot equally smooth, flat and distinguished, because of their view, cold- colored.."

"[quoting a verse from the Torah, including some faults]: Behold, I send an angel before you, to guard you on this road, and to bring you to the place which I have prepared; Exodus 23:20. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)."

"The old clothing-jew [ in his painting: 'Son of the Old People', 1889 ] I made, was a Jew. But not because he was a Jew I painted him [Israëls was a Jew himself] -.. ..a painter paints like a painter and not because he is a Jew.. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)."

"I don't believe in Jewish art. There are Jewish artists, which means, artists who are born Jewish, but that does not mean that their work is Jewish art. (translation from Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"The picture of the 'New Flower' ['Het Bloempje', 1880] is really one of those I did with much idea of having to express loveliness and youth both in human feeling and in the naturally plants of flowers, and If I may say don't you find, that I have succeed in this composition?"

"..it [his watercolor 'New Flower' ['Het Bloempje', 1880] is one of those pictures, I did my best to finish it highly, as the story is nice and pleasant [where] other pictures may be more necessarily rough or strong being paint in an other mood. But this new flower needed a tender hand and conspicuous attention for details."

"As I hear, you are the possessors of one of my favorite paintings 'The children on the beach' and I can tell you that few pictures by me, have so much figures, busy in the subject. Therefore I mean that this picture is an unicum and I hope you will give it a good light and place in your gallery."

"There he Rembrandt stood, when everything was on the canvas [of the 'Night Watch'], but then he shook his head.. ..In his opinion the two men [in the center of the painting: Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch did not yet come forward into the foreground. Then he [Rembrandt] took up his large palette again, dicked his thickest brushes deep into the paint, and once again took on these two front figures with powerful strokes; here more depth, there more light. In this way he put everything to the test, in order to give an even more powerful relief to what needed to stand out. Then he saw that it was good, and that is how he left it. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..[that] there will always be people who will count these paintings [of Israëls] to the most remarkable expressions of nineteenth-century art.. ..what a wonderful gallery of the children of our golden beaches has the painter.. ..conjured up from his brush. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Too literary. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"And there we have my good rabbi.. ..he came up so tired in the studio, and then I put him down here. There was such a real seat in that guy, so with his pants slumped. That's nice, isn't it, that long black cloak with those wide folds and that slackly beer mat. He is holding the Torah role in his arm, do you see?. ..I known that old rab for a lot of years already, and with Purim and Rosh HaShanah [Jewish New Year] he comes faithfully around for his douceur [tip]. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..an original Jewish art can only come into existence when the Jews have own ground under their feet and live in freedom [Bainin asked him: 'is that not what Zionism wants to reach?'] Yes, Zionism is a noble thought, but who knows whether they will reach their goal? Herzl visited me [in The Hague, Oct. 1898], he is a noble man and believes in his idea. But who will know.. .Now it is our duty to fight against Antisemitism, to protest against the injustice and violence that is done to us.. ..what is the essence of Jewish art should be determined by writers and art critics: we painters must work and not philosophize. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..but I must have it back [a sketch of mother with child at the breast] very soon, because I become attached to it.. .Such a sketch is a part of my life; it always stays. I use it ten or twenty times.. .It is a foundation on which I build. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..on my travels, for example, abroad,. .I see things that attract me, in the works of others, - which impress me. That's what you reflect upon at times. And when you come home you think: Me too have to make something like that.. .Then you start, and when it's finished it looks like the work of that person or another.. .But your own originality doesn't get lost, - your sentiment remains!. .And this happens not only to me, - this happens to others also.. .Unintentionally you continue to build on motives of others.. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Actually I don't have any painting at home.. ..they take away everything from me, almost before it's finished.. .That Jewish scribe there, is sold to [Dutch art-seller] Buffa, and it isn't finished at all yet. And this 'Kolen lossen' is also sold.. .Then I have here 'The Mowers' - just set up.. .And that drawing here, will be a good piece too!. .That will become a large painting: a 'Jewish Wedding' - at the moment the groom puts the ring on the finger of his bride.. ..you can't see very much yet, do you? (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..when I heard that he would come next day [his regular art-seller Buffa, who had sent him a large frame including canvas because Israel had promised him a large painting], I put the canvas on an easel, eager to see for myself what would occur, I did already a sketch of something after nature what would just fit very well in that [large] size, but the most significant element was still wanting.. ..the lines of the sketch indicated a woman, walking along the road.. .I thought however, once more another woman with a child? I already had two on the plate [waiting already in the studio, probably], it was a road along a canal during the Evening hour and a meadow, enclose by a small tree. I then put the figures in it but I didn't like the result. That moment the Rotterdam' writer Brusse walked in with me.. ..he was looking attentive how I repainted the woman into a man on horseback.. .,but soon already I didn't like that either and I repainted it into an image of two Lovers. Mr. Brusse and I saw many beautiful things in it, although one could hardly see what was really presented. In the meantime I got teased by turmoil about this composition, and during my walk next morning I thought it was too sentimental, that Evening (hour) or those Lovers.. .I then imagined myself an old gentleman walking back home at Evening hour, I painted that image on the canvas and added a few tiny trees, and that was it. his painting 'Levens-avond / Evening of Life', 1904 ] (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"The beautiful, spontaneous Israels, that is the painter when he is in his own studio; that is the talker who sometimes goes outside for a moment, as when he was walking beside me in the woods, before dinner: 'You cannot know at all what will comes out of you because all your knowledge is running otherwise.. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..the owner [of the painting 'When one grows old', 1883].. ..had to hear a lot of comments about it, they called it the apotheosis of a cape, the figure much too big for the frame, etc. etc. [deleted by Israëls:] so they advised him to exchange it for one of my other works. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"sometimes they went away [the cows in Oosterbeek] before he started and sometimes [they were] so quiet and unmovable that he had to shout to start them moving, otherwise his conscience wouldn't allow him to declare the study as finished. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Mauve had a tendency for that! - painting it all over. Once they brought him a canvas from that art dealer, who it was I don't remember any more. Was he willing to touch up a little those tree branches? 'Just lay it down!' he says, 'I'll do it in a minute'. A few minutes later he went upstairs for the job - just doing that branches a little, ... but wait, I better pull the air over them, Like that, right! Oh, actually the whole tree can better be removed. And the ground brushed through. But wait a minute, that figurine there ... Shortly afterwards the art dealer comes up. 'How do you like it?' asks Mauve. 'Very well!' the requested says, but where is the other painting? (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Studio in the Miss Idastraat [in The Hague]. - Now you must not think that our studio [of Willem Maris, Mauve and other artists, 1860's] was so special. It was on the sunny side - and we had to deal with only a second window that you opened and closed according to whether it was sunny or cloudy. A gymnastics master lived below. There his pupils were practicing diligently on the rings: bòns, bòns. And above us lived a ... trombonist. Then Mauve sometimes, mad with anger, stood pounding his painting-stick against the floor and attic: 'You will stop now at last!' (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"But Mauve is not dead! When we walk in those pretty country lanes under the birch trees, with their silvery leaves and pearly aspect; when we watch the sun caressing the green meadows and playing about among the branches of the willow, or over the alder and hazel trees; when we hear the echo of the tinkling bell of the sheep on the heath, we say: 'Mauve lives, he is here, he is here!'"

"Many times - sometimes in the middle of a conversation - he stopped walking, to attach in one single pull something that struck him outdoors on the paper: a tree, a ditch, a cloudy shadow, the position of a sheep or cow. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Whoever knew Mauve closely knows how much time he spent on such paintings; how many walks and studies were needed to renew his impression and to settle it, and how difficult he decided to separate himself from such a canvas, even so strongly that, when the canvas was carried out of his house, he still kept working on it in the hallway. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I'd worked on a canvas in the open air in an orchard — ploughed lilac field, a reed fence — two pink peach trees against a glorious blue and white sky. Probably the best landscape I've done. Just as I brought it home I received from our sister [Willemien] a piece in Dutch dedicated to Mauve's memory.. ..something or other grabbed hold of me and made my throat tight with emotion, and I wrote on my painting: 'Souvenir de Mauve - Vincent & Theo' - and if you think it's good as it stands we'll send it to Mrs. [Jet] Mauve in both our names. I deliberately took the best study I've made here.. .It seemed to me that in memory of Mauve we needed something that was both tender and very cheerful.."

"Anton has gone again through a period of nerve weakness.. ..he had no rest at all or I had to be with him, walking a lot and talking all the time, but try to comfort and especially look like a happy person.. ..but the worst is over now and this morning he was calm again on a great walk we made together, and he felt such a strong feeling of happiness and gratitude. You can't believe how childlike he can be then and how delighted he can enjoy life.. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"..the true quiet nature [of] Laren, that was where he believed to be able to live fresh.. .His health improved a lot. Perhaps because the work was bowling along or it was the air of Laren, I don't know. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)"

".I thought you knew [that] I don't admire the man [Anton Mauve] himself, but I find him clever and he is the only person who feels for nature what I have carried in myself for so long.. ..that notions of infinite wealth of true happiness that can atwinkle a person when he sees something beautiful that stirs him to his soul by that peculiar charm.. ..and Mauve was the first one with whom I found that resonance and who can feel the same indescribable pleasure on a beautiful day outside and it's a nice thing to walk around with someone who starts glowing for a piece of heather and a few trees as I do.. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"[Loffelt tells how Mauve, c. 1880] studied with full attention and sympathy [the work of] Millet in an extensive collection of photographic images [of Millet's work] that belonged to his house gods. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"I spent an afternoon and part of an evening at Mauve’s and saw many beautiful things in his studio. My own drawings interested Mauve more. He gave me a great many suggestions, which I'm glad of, and I've sort of arranged to pay him another visit fairly soon when I have some more studies. He showed me a whole batch of his studies and explained them to me - not sketches for drawings or designs for paintings but true study sheets, apparently insignificant. He wants me to start painting."

"There's a Mauve, the large painting of the pink being dragged onto the dunes [at the Dutch coast near The Hague], it's a masterpiece. I've never heard a good sermon about resignation nor been able to imagine one, except for this painting by Mauve and the work of Millet. It is indeed resignation, but the true kind, not that of the clergymen. Those nags, those poor, sorry-looking nags, black, white, brown, they stand there, patiently submissive, willing, resigned, still. They'll soon have to drag the heavy boat the last bit of the way, the job's almost done. They stand still for a moment, they pant, they're covered in sweat, but they don't murmur, they don't protest – they don't complain – about anything. They're long past that, years ago already. They're resigned to living and working a while longer, but if they have to go to the knacker's yard tomorrow, so be it, they're ready for it. I find such a wonderfully elevated, practical, wordless philosophy in this painting.. .It seems to me that this painting by Mauve would be one of those rare paintings which Millet would stand in front of for a long time, mumbling to himself, 'he has a good heart, that painter'."

"Because I had started [his sketch in oil, in the dunes] before the storm on my knees with a low horizon, I now had to kneel down in the mud.. .The outcome this time was that I was able to take that piece of ground with me to the studio — although Mauve rightly said to me when we were discussing one of his studies that it's a job to draw clods of earth and to get depth into them."

"You go outside, light your pipe, whistle a tune and just paint what you come across. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"Just follow the lead of the Dutch seventeenth-century master-painters, we have to look at the country around us in the way the old masters did. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"..it's a pity that he [Anton Mauve] is so limited, he was here Sunday and Monday and I talked to him a lot, I think he is a bit of a week; very sensitive, a warm man, but so simple and round. Yet I thought he was even more limited, he admitted that direction [in painting] is nonsense and that everything depends on personality; he strongly advised me to paint many large figures in open air; don't talk about it to anyone: it's nobody's business.. (translation, Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Hereby I send you back the 'Winter' [a painting]. I hope you will be better satisfied now. After alternately smashing away and adding on the cart some new figures, finally this one climbed up, which I hope will do better than its predecessors.. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"..the [art-]dealers were constantly demanding more, so that Mauve would sometimes jestingly speak of his studio as 'the Great Factory'.."

"Take care for this, don't start with the sentiment first, [because] that's where a piece of art is ending with - but the good start is drawing good and right. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I am busy working on a large painting with sheep; the last days I am working with real pleasure, the weather is.. ..not too hot and with nice skies. It's great here!!!! I shout with joy the whole day and more and more I desire to stay here until the end. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"I ordered Major [transport company] tomorrow afternoon 2 o'clock to pack the paintings, I am still completely in all the paintings - as nightmares they are flying around me, now you know as of old how that is, but tomorrow afternoon at 2 o'clock I am free. I believe there are nice things among them, the drawing has become a little too fat, but there is much good in it, and it is very well-finished. I send to Peacock. The forest with wood hackers, which was hanging above the door of my studio, then the sheep [small composition-sketch of a sheep herd with shepherd] and.. .I believe you know them all, 7 pieces together, afterwards I have to start working for Arnold & Tripp [art-sellers in Paris], I let those guys wait and that's not right to do.. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"Our plans were to go to Amsterdam and Laren tomorrow and then spend another day with you.. .I am very busy again with 7 paintings at the same time, I still have a lot to do before I can go to Laren, going to live there. Now, this week I can say it more confidently, - when we find a suitable location.. .We are on a leap of eating out therefore this scribbling.. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"You're too close to your model."

"This is how you should hold your palette."

"All my canvases I paint after sketches. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"our Goddess [how painting is going] is sometimes so erratic, just when you want to speak to her, she is hiding and if you did not immediately think of her, she comes to give hanks incessantly and is so kind, anyway - we shall see.. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

".never in my life I have seen such a truly sad thing [an atmosphere at Wolfheze ]. A mother heartbroken about the loss of her only child is nothing compared to this. A broad streak or strip in front of you, which becomes blacker and blacker towards the horizon. a mysterious ticking and hissing of rain drops which keep hanging halfway the heather plant on each twig and sprout.. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"Come on, don't wait, come! Or don't you like to roll into the lush grass? I really would like to be completely a cow, to feel in that way the childish fun that such a beast gets when it is running about in the pasture and makes all that kind of silly jumps with its tail high in the air. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)"

"..coloring is also drawing."