Here is a beautiful letter from one painter to another:
My dear and good Joseph, I am both very happy and very proud to learn from our dear Arthur that you have just been named an honorary member of the Academy of Vienna.
Every time you receive a new distinction, every time justice is done to your talent, my heart as a painter and a brother rejoices more than if that distinction were granted to me.
I have often told you: most of your paintings will endure. Whether the note you bring to this art—as a genre—is considered high or low, what does it matter! In the art of painting, the genre counts for little if the man does not reveal himself in the work.
For several centuries, you have been the only truly Flemish painter.
Leys lived only on old memories of the early Flemish painters, never moved by his own time. Madou, the same.
The new Belgian generation, if it produces a few painters, will owe it to French art.
I myself (I say this very quietly) am more Parisian today than a man of Brussels.