The same year [1835] I made my debut at the Exposition in Rotterdam with [his painting] "the St. Janskerk in ’s Hertogenbosch, the interior", which immediately found a merchant… The approval by this, [and] the renewed appreciation I got in Felix 38, now concerning a 'church with incident sunlight', together with my personal characteristic tendency to reproduce the impressions which church buildings gave me, led me gradually to choose and prefer this genre [church-interiors], [and to visit] Belgium in '37 and repeatedly to return there, attracted by the abundance of study [many churches], that this country offered me..
The romantic [Dutch] movement under the leadership of the geniuses Nuyen [c. 1830] also attracted me to follow. And in spite of the fact that in this way people lost their color and embellishment and often degenerating into chic, later on, a more sensible search arose for enlivening of coloration, heightening effect and strengthening the relief.
As a schoolboy drawing-lessons became my favorite, and that pleasure was not ignited a little when, by the time of my twelfth year, the cityscape-painter B. J. van Hove became our neighbor. Since then I began to long for the moment that I would be allowed to change the school bench for a place in his studio. That desire was already satisfied in the autumn of [18]31.
