"I have seen pictures [on the Salon of Brussel, 1860], of which I had never dreamed and in which I found all that my heart desires, all that I nearly always miss in the Dutch painters. Troyon, Courbet, Diaz, Dupré [all painters of the School of Barbizon, Robert Fleury have made a great impression on me. I am a good Frenchman, therefore; but, as Simon van den Berg says, it is just because I am a good Frenchman that I am a good Dutchman, since the great Frenchmen of today and the great Dutchmen of the past have much in common. Unity, restfulness, earnestness and, above all, an inexplicable intimacy with nature are what struck me most in these pictures. There were certainly also a few good Dutch pieces, but, generally speaking, when you place them next to the great Parisians, they lack that mellowness, that quality which, so to speak, resembles the deep tones of an organ. And yet this luxurious manner came originally from Holland, from our steaming, fat-coloured Holland! They were courageous pictures; there was a heart and a soul in them."