Clergyman's

..I would like to ask your advice as a friend, namely whether you believe I should submit my painting 'Ouden en Jongen' to Brussels or not. I thought it was a nice painting, but now I read in the Handelsblad that it is so bad. What is truth about that. Please do me the favor to sent me some words sans facon , what is your opinion about this.
- Jozef Israëls

..I would like to ask your advice as a friend, namely whether you believe I should submit my painting 'Ouden en Jongen' to Brussels or not. I thought it was a nice painting, but now I read in the Handelsblad that it is so bad. What is truth about that. Please do me the favor to sent me some words sans facon , what is your opinion about this.
- Jozef Israëls

Lord, oh Lord, will I return to you once, being a genuine artist. Will all those Art lovers once behold my works with reverence and the laurel of Art then adorn my head.. .I experience so ardently all the beauty of my noble career.. .And once again I call to you, it would be much better not to live at all than being disappointed in my feeling. .
- Jozef Israëls

Lord, oh Lord, will I return to you once, being a genuine artist. Will all those Art lovers once behold my works with reverence and the laurel of Art then adorn my head.. .I experience so ardently all the beauty of my noble career.. .And once again I call to you, it would be much better not to live at all than being disappointed in my feeling. .
- Jozef Israëls

And there we have my good rabbi.. ..he came up so tired in the studio, and then I put him down here. There was such a real seat in that guy, so with his pants slumped. That's nice, isn't it, that long black cloak with those wide folds and that slackly beer mat. He is holding the Torah role in his arm, do you see?. ..I known that old rab for a lot of years already, and with Purim and Rosh HaShanah he comes faithfully around for his douceur .
- Jozef Israëls

And there we have my good rabbi.. ..he came up so tired in the studio, and then I put him down here. There was such a real seat in that guy, so with his pants slumped. That's nice, isn't it, that long black cloak with those wide folds and that slackly beer mat. He is holding the Torah role in his arm, do you see?. ..I known that old rab for a lot of years already, and with Purim and Rosh HaShanah he comes faithfully around for his douceur .
- Jozef Israëls

There he Rembrandt stood, when everything was on the canvas , but then he shook his head.. ..In his opinion the two men took up his large palette again, dicked his thickest brushes deep into the paint, and once again took on these two front figures with powerful strokes; here more depth, there more light. In this way he put everything to the test, in order to give an even more powerful relief to what needed to stand out. Then he saw that it was good, and that is how he left it.
- Jozef Israëls

You cannot know at all what will comes out of you because all your knowledge is running otherwise. What you do not know and what you thought that there would not come at all, that comes out and appears at once, sometimes with a curse and a sigh, and there you have it. - Everything ends well. I made things that I had forgotten for twenty five years. At first I knew them too well, but then I forgot them, I 'had to' forget them. And then I made them. - If some work does not becomes beautiful, well, then you go back to do something else. Worrying doesn't help at all. It will be better later? No, you should not say such things, because you don't know anything about 'becoming better'.
- Jozef Israëls

As the paintings the 'Night Watch' and the 'Staalmeesters' are showed now it is clear to everyone that they have searched but, indeed messed with it, to enable these paintings to do what they can do . But you see, they did not find a good solution just because they appreciated the museum itself higher than the paintings themselves. I told at the very first opening of the Rijksmuseum already everyone who wanted to listen to me: in this room, where the Night Watch' is hanging now, it can never comes to its full right.. ..There must be built for the 'Night Watch' and for the 'Staalmeesters' a separate room each .. .. standing light and the paintings positioned on an easel or standard behind.. ..I just want to add here, that my own studio can serve as a very special model.. ..concerning the sizes and the lighting.
- Jozef Israëls