The tree which rustles and the heather which grows are for me the grand history, that which will not change. If I speak well their language, I shall … - Théodore Rousseau

Do you see all those beautiful trees there ? I sketched them all thirty years ago; I have had all their portraits. Look at that beech there, the sun lights it up and makes of it a marble column, a column that has muscles, limbs, hands and a fair skin, white and pallid.. .See the modest green of the heath and its plants, rosy, amaranthine, which distil honey for the bees and fragrance for the butterflies. The sun lights them up and gives them a diapason of extraordinary color. Ah, the sun..

* Charles Jacque to Th. Rousseau: 'I should think you got weary here'.
* Rousseau: 'That depends; when you wish to do so, one can always find beautiful things to study and understand. Look here at this charcoal-burner [in the field] before us, with his big felt hat - who is thinking of his sacks and of his faggots sees how the shadow of those large brims gives a clear yet grave tint to his face'.
* Charles Jacque: 'Draw him, Rousseau, in this pensive attitude, he does not doubt that he is handsome, and if he posed himself he would become repellent. See, here is a sketch-book, go on!'

If my painting depicts faithfully and without over-refinement the simple and true character of the place you have frequented, if I succeed.. ..in giving its own life to that world of vegetation, then you will hear the trees moaning under the winter wind, the birds that call their young and cry after their dispersion ; you will feel the old chateau tremble; it will tell you that, as the wife you loved, it too will.. ..disappear and be reborn in multiple forms.. One does not copy with mathematical precision what one sees, but one feels and interprets a real world, all of whose fatalities hold you fast bound.