"It were mainly three or four [paintings] which kept him specifically busy [in the 1890's]. They were in progress for years already and he always spent hours and hours working on them - in which he wholly and truly disappeared into his work, persistently trying to perfect it in construction or composition and to saturate it with the life itself, of his soul - never satisfied with any result he achieved. Most of the time 'The Westmacott children' [and] 'The child with the Butterflies' were on his easel, and never they stayed the same with a next visit. They both had an expression that only he could give them. Sometimes, he acknowledged, he spent too many days working on one single work, with the inevitable danger of weakening his sensitivity by a lack of variety. Often it was sad to see that he could not leave them as they were.."