Gerharda Hermina Marius

“ In the background is a cradle with a child, watched over by a placid cat, a cow and a number of yellow chickens, which trip close past the cradle: a deliciously homely and delightfully-painted slice of life, enlivened by the rays falling from the skylight upon the cradle and deepening all the colours in the foreground, so that the blue becomes bluer, the green real, mellow grass-green, and the scene of the cradle, the cat, the cow and the chickens, with a few objects around, placed in the full light, forms the centre of the picture. ”

“ And, soon, driven to the painting of miniature-pieces either because of his near-sightedness or because of the taste of the day, we find him at Oegstgeest, far from all schools of art, taking up that genre-painting in which he was essentially himself and for which his unmarried sisters sat as voluntary models. Although the pictures with many figures are more interesting, I prefer the single figures for their colour-scheme: it is more unconstrained and often contains more tone. ”

“ His good qualities are often thrust into the background, because of a change in the accepted formula; but, at each new turn of the road we catch a fresh glimpse of the former period, which is then weighed and frequently valued anew. But what can never be made good is the sorrow that must needs be felt by a painter who, after passing through years of triumph, is forgotten in his own lifetime. David Bles died in 1899, too early to witness the revolution which has once more enabled us to see what was good in the days before the coming of the great Hague men. ”