Painters From The Netherlands

"..truly, if I sometimes of my work under the eyes, I love a genre [churches!], which in the fullest sense of saying may be called 'mine'. [the word 'mine' double underlined]"

"The death of the unforgettable Nuyen has moved me deeply, Jan. Now the hope for young painting art [in The Netherlands] lies on You. Surely you are, after Nuyen, the only one who can fulfill this task."

"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)"

"In the [art-magazine] 'Kunst-Kronijk' my work 'Monastic corridor' came under your eyes; it is after a drawing that I started at Kleve after Nature and of which the painting is now almost finished. I believe, you know Kleve. The smallest of the Catholic Churches is a kind of monastery church; it has a nice sacristy, and the passage along the building gave me the motive of which you saw the lithography. On the same spot I designed a sketch in the 'Paarden-posterij' [Horse post-location] (where the cars are stored at Emmerich). I later made it a drawing - one of my best, and also the construction of it is now already in oil, to be completed soon. As motive, aspect, effect, etc. it pleases everyone - it is a real stable with lots of horses in it, and yet I do not have to make an enormous effort to paint the horses. As they are in the stable, they take the mysterious part [of the image]. Who knows, the K[unst]-K[ronyk] will produce a reproduction of it."

"An architect, who was a great lover of art, once said to the writer [= E.B. Greenshields himself!] 'From that point of view, Bosboom is all wrong. He does not draw correctly from the architect's standpoint, but he does something far more difficult and much finer. He gives us the effect of airy atmospheric spacious interiors. He reaches the end he sought splendidly, and produces wonderfully beautiful and poetical pictures, but not architectural drawings."

"He [Bosbooom] may have been influenced by Romanticism and in particular by [[w:Wijnand Nuijen|[Wijnand] Nuyen]], later he may have sought more powerful effects in his admiration for Rembrandt, after 1870 he may have been influenced by the modern breath of a burgeoning [[w:Impressionism|Impressionism - and this was unquestionably the case, - it does not detract from the fact that from the very beginning he remained himself, from the very beginning he was recognized for the gifts of his heart and his hand in a genre which at that time was quite widely practiced."

"[ 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)"

"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)."

"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)"

"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)"

"Next morning [after J.W. Bilders had visited Israëls and thought his recent painting was 'somewhat gray'. he got up early to put the whole painting in the soap from top to bottom and after breakfast after the walk he was still picking up the work a bit; then the painting was good. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Those miraculous delicate interior-atmospheres of Israëls, that transparently tissue of air and light, dissolving itself apart from all solid colors... and the slightly nebula, both in the house and outdoors, the grayness that is just feeling, the melancholy that is just tenderness.. ..the painter of the covered light, which barely breaks through.. ..but only floats.. ..through the houses full of care and nostalgia or lights up in the staring eyes of weary toilers, men or women.. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Israels, and his friend and follower (yet powerful artist on his own account) Blommers, have painted them under every possible condition: cottage Madonnas, [cottage] breakfasts, [cottage] dinners, feeding baby, and all the ages of motherhood and childhood are there. For years Israels had in his studio the interior of a peasant's cottage erected as a model, and his Reveries, Weary Watchers, and kindred subjects have come therefrom."

"The exquisite work of art of this master is painted in a truly mysterious way, only by the nervous ability of that unlearned hand; with messy darking licks and scratchy sweeps of paint, creating a wonderful mixture of sharp relief and decaying confusion.. .Rough and soft, rottenness and suppleness, filthiness and purity conjure up a grandiose depth of life with [the works of] Israëls. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"[Jozef] Israels first became himself [as an artist] at an age when most painters have already delivered their best work, and if he had been so unlucky to dy at the age of forty, Holland would have counted one of his best sons less."

"But one morning when the model for the painting ['Nothing More / Alone'] had been ordered, the man was sitting, waiting in the studio. When Israel came in, he saw him sitting, drowsing with his hands on his knees, the figure in shade, while the light from the window [in the studio] was dominating the scene. He understood that in this way the actual mystery, the real affection of the scene, became infinitely stronger, and so he painted his work and so it remained. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"So whoever thinks it is fortunate to be known in large circles, can say that in his artist career, Mr. Israëls had the fortune to become famous with works of transient importance - and later with paintings of inestimable value he more than deserved his already acquired fame. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

".. [Jozef] Israels paints the floors of his interiors, and produces a perfectly level appearance in them as they gradually retreat from the spectator.. .The effect is gained by a masterly combination of linear and aerial or colour perspective, and by getting the values absolutely true, all of which gives the appearance of depth to the flat surface the painter has to work on. It helps largely to give a feeling of atmosphere to the scene, and we are able to follow the strong light in the foreground as it plays round figures and furniture through finely graduated passages of colour, until it is lost in the dim distance."

"Kann.. ..took me to the painter Israëls yesterday [in The Hague]. A small, quick, wise old little jew. He was just busy painting a harp-playing 'David and Saul. I explained Zionism and won him. He thought the idea was beautiful."

"It should not be denied that Impressionism went beyond [Jozef] Israëls. Where would he be - Israëls, if Manet could have influenced him? Isn't it in his one-sidedness to Impressionism that we find the proof for the power of his conviction? (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"Who would ever forget the sensation that once gave us [in 1884] the tremendous cold of the old woman [ in the painting 'Als men oud wordt', 1883 ].. ..[at] an almost burnt-out fire,. .What an expression in those hands.. .And what a masterpiece is that old cape.. (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)"

"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)"

"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.."

"By rough-made engravings after 'Along the Churchyard', and 'After the Storm' [some of his famous, older paintings], .. the name of the maker sounds familiar for thousands of people.. .Mr. Israëls painted life-stories and funerals and all kinds of touching figures.. .,and when he - in a later, more mature period - achieved to become a truly artistic painter, he already was the well-known Israëls and people took his works just for granted.. ..he, who got the fortune in his artist career to become famous with works of momentary importance, and who deserved later his fame once more with paintings of inestimable value. translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"This double effect of treating the light inside the room ànd outside is very characteristic of Israels, and it has not been treated in this natural way by anyone before him. Yet natural as it seems, it has a magic power; for it carries our thoughts out of ourselves, out through the window in the walls that shut us in, and we dream as we gaze away into the far beyond."

"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."

"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)"

"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)"

"[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)."

"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)"

"The boss [her husband] is hard working, busy with a very beautiful painting ‘from darkness into light', a woman sitting on a chair with her hand in front of the face, a little love is lying innocent in the cradle, a child of about six years is sitting on her lap with the head on mother's knee; the corpse of the father is carried out by a sad flock of people; one can see the sky and the spire [through the doorway], it is 'touching' (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)"

"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?"

"..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)"

"..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)"

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

"..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."

"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)"

"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,."

"Isaac [his son, also a painter] and Liebermann had a lot of hassle with horses at the beach during the summer [in Katwijk ] and I also got a wipe of it.. (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)"

"You should write about me, just like you did about Degas (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"There are people who think that it [the Watch', in the Rijksmuseum, 1884] is placed beautifully, - it shines, it just roars like a fairground attraction - but is that the way that the greatest art ought to be exhibited? After all, it is unnecessary to add something to the already so strong [light-dark] effect and to the compressing character of the composition, but one must know, learn and feel what Rembrandt really is about. It is no fun or a shout, it is serious and broad art.."

"But I have to tell you what I saw.. .I had entered a dark room [in the city Tunis], lit by a small, elongated horizontal window,. .The light cut sharply.. ..and drew itself on the stone floor.. .There behind the table was sitting the Jewish scribe with his arms forward, leaning on the parchment. He turned his lordly head in my direction.. .It was a beautiful head, delicate and translucent pale as alabaster, large and small wrinkles were lining along the small eyes and around the big curved hawk nose. A black cap covered the white skull and a low white-yellow beard lay in large tufts over the written parchment.. .two crutches lay slantingly on the floor beside him. How much I desired to get my sketchbook out.. ..but in front of the staring gaze of the scribe, I didn't find the courage to carry out my intention. (translation from the original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)"

"As the paintings the 'Night Watch' and the 'Staalmeesters' [famous works of Rembrandt ] are showed now [in the Rijksmuseum, 1894] it is clear to everyone that they have searched but, indeed messed with it, to enable these paintings to do what they can do [visually]. But you see, they did not find a good solution just because they appreciated the museum itself [a rather new building, then!] higher than the paintings themselves. I told at the very first opening of the Rijksmuseum [1885] already everyone who wanted to listen to me: in this room, where the Night Watch' is hanging now, it can never comes to its full right.. ..There must be built for the 'Night Watch' and for the 'Staalmeesters' a separate room each .. ..[with] standing light and the paintings positioned on an easel or standard behind.. ..I just want to add here, that my own studio can serve as a very special model.. ..concerning the sizes and the lighting."