You can't sell anything to the museum nowadays. If one presents something now, one is partly rejected because they have no money in cash. Yes Friend, that's how things are going… It's going very bad here with the old arts in The Hague., I hardly hear of anything. How are things going in Rotterdam? I believe that also there is not much moving.
.. when the terrible storm and high flood of water raged most fearfully, I went to Schevelinge…. sea and sky seemed to be one [undivided] element; at the height where I stood — because the sea had already washed away dunes and stood up to the village – the view was horrible; the wailing of the inhabitants awful. — when arriving home, I immediately put a sketch of all this on paper — but that sketch represented so little of what I had seen on the spot itself…. [where] no part turned up itself of which I could make a sketch…. [so it] will be necessary for me to return to Scheveningen again and to outline those places where the water has raged most violently.. (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)
.. and since we are now living in the Summer-time, I don't have a trick to imagine me Winter so strongly that I would be able to paint one [a winter-landscape]…. and you must have patience until next winter.