Myself, I will paint the people in the street and in the houses, the streets and houses they have built, life in general. I will attempt to be 'Le peintre du peuple' (the painter of the people), or rather I am that already, because I want to be. I want to paint history, and I will, but history in its' broadest sense. A market, a wharf, a river, a group of soldiers under a burning sun or in the snow.

Letter to A.P.van Stolk, 28 March 1882