"Yesterday I received a letter from my father He told me to come at once, to paint the goats in a rather large forest landscape-painting he just finished, which has to be sent away at once . I earn back my travelling but will loose one day studying in open air. When my goats will succeed, and they are not too stubborn, I'll be back here tomorrow at one o'clock in the afternoon."

“All I can tell is that they are more blatant than in my studio, and secondly that I have been honored with a pretty good review. ..the jury found evidence of a thoroughly study and of happy sunlight in my works. They thought that I had to cherish a lot of love for nature, to be able to show it so sensitive .. .. can not deny that I am very pleased to find that my small paintings have been noticed favorably. And besides that, one will never forget his first review..”

“images of paintings of Gerard Bilders in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam”

“To preserve the sense of the 'grey' even in the most powerful green is amazingly difficult and whoever discovers it will be a happy mortal.”

“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 is imaging.”

“The moon appeared for some time and the rocks seemed to be much bigger than they were. The mountains were silvery illuminated and appeared gently against the mysterious blue of the sky - that blue color with moonlight, that has such an indefinable, deep tone; actually it is not a blue.”

“I am searching for a tone, which we call 'colored grey'. I mean that all colors, even the strongest, can be brought together in such a way as to give the impression of a warm, vital grey.”