"I started reading Flaubert's 'Salambô'. The first chapter was very strong. I prefer Flaubert above Zola, the Concourt even more. No doubt you know the Concourts, Edm. and Jules, two brothers. 'Manette Salomon' is one of their most beautiful creations. If you could read that, I believe you do me and yourself a great pleasure. The type of Chassagnol, the man who understands so much about Art - yes, he has the purest ideas on art of all - I find adorable. He understands everything and that's why he can not be an artist himself or the greatest. I recommend that book to anyone, layman or painter and I will buy it myself."

“I have also been working on the large canvas for a few months. and it has turned into a cavalry charge, which I hope for sure to be able to exhibit in Spring.”

“What I lack are the skills of painting, the profession which I don't know, and now I see that the French possess this so extremely strong. I do believe that you can learn it all here. I am in Paris now. When someone is richer than me and he wants me to stay here for a year or half a year my future will have a lot of more certainty than when I must go back to Holland after eight days.. .I hope you will be able to fulfill my wish; I also put enough trust in you that you will do this, if you can. Waiting for your letter with a lot of anxiety, I remain' - G.H. Breitner”

“many free pictures of Breitner's paintings: on the website, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam”

“This place , is just about the same as the Hobbema-straat, and that is precisely not the character of Amsterdam..”

“..but also for the person who is visiting Paris later in his life for the very first time, something unusual will happen.. ..then there appears for the man of age a light - a light in which he sees the dreamy images of his life transforming into more tangible and more solid forms. Because that city has created our modern culture, and the movements of life in most countries are just a reflex of those which are starting in France's capital.”

“biographical notes on George Hendrik Breitner, in Dutch RKD-Archive, The Hague”