"For me Ruisdael is the true man of poetry, the real poet. There is a world of sad, serious and beautiful thoughts in his paintings. They possess a soul and a voice that sounds deep, sad and dignified. They tell melancholic stories, speak of gloomy things and are witnesses of a sad spirit. I see him wander, turned in on himself, his heart opened to the beauties of nature, in accordance with his mood, on the banks of that dark gray stream that rustles and splashes along the reeds. And those skies!.. .In the skies one is completely free, untied, all of himself.. ..what a genius he is! He is my ideal and almost something perfect. When it storms and rains, and heavy, black clouds fly back and forth, the trees whiz and now and then a strange light breaks through the air, and falls down here and there on the landscape, and there is a heavy voice, a grand mood in nature; that is what he paints; that is what he [Ruysdael] is imaging."
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pp. 51+52, - Bilders' diary, 24 March 1860, written in Amsterdam
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gerard_Bilders
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Gerard Bilders
Albertus Gerardus "Gerard" Bilders (9 December 1838 – 8 March 1865), son of painter Johannes Warnardus Bilders, was a Dutch landscape-painter who foreshadowed with his typical 'warm grey' the tonal painting style of the Hague School painters. He was frequently painting in plein air with Anton Mauve, and Willem Maris around the village Oosterbeek.
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