In Fall, October, November, I'm usually at work in Heeze, for interior studies. That is a beautiful, and the most quite time; the leaf of the trees [… - Suze Robertson

..I therefore got around to painting [in Amsterdam, 1883] and that's why teaching started to become a burden for me. So then it HAD to happen now: Make or break! And I asked my dismissal at the school, threw away my 2500 florin a year, sacrificed everything, although I never made any painting yet, and certainly sold nothing at all. And my acquaintances, my family, they found me reckless and shamefully frivolous with my sacrifice to art, for which they did not felt any sympathy or understand anything of it after all.

.In the beginning I was struggling very much with [painting] children, for that painting by Br. [probably, Henk Bremmer?]. It has an almost square format. The woman must look to the right [and] there must be a child with her.. .But I painted only a few children with mothers, and recent times not at all; and then that size (square), I don't know how to handle it. I now think to come back to The Hague Sunday afternoon [and] to leave Heeze early. Monday here is another holy Day [catholic region]. So I can not work then.. (translation from original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)

No, absolutely not, I have never been what one calls a gifted child, never a dreamer. I didn't think of making fantasies with the pencil on the paper, although at school we learned to draw and play music of course. But in those days the piano was actually what I preferred most.. .But until my eighteenth year I have been hesitating long between both [painting and playing piano]..