After her return to her home at The Hague, Bilders established a studio there and showed a still keener interest in his pupil.  This artistic friendship resulted in the marriage of the two artists, and in 1880 they established themselves in Oosterbeck.

Here began the intimate study of the heath which so largely influenced the best pictures by Frau Bilders.  In the garden of the picturesque house in which the two artists lived was an old barn, which became her studio, where, early and late, in all sorts of weather, she devotedly observed the effects later pictured on her canvases.  At this time she executed one of her best works, now in the collection of the Prince Regent of Brunswick.  It is thus described by a Dutch writer in Rooses’ “Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century”: 

“It represents a deep pool, overshadowed by old gnarled willows in their autumnal foliage, their silvery trunks bending over, as if to see themselves in the clear, still water.  On the edge of the pool are flowers and variegated grasses, the latter looking as if they wished to crowd out the former—­as if they were in the right and the flowers in the wrong; as if such bright-hued creatures had no business to eclipse their more sombre tones; as if they and they alone were suited to this silent, forsaken spot.”

Johannes Bilders was fully twenty-five years older than his wife, and the failure of both his physical and mental powers in his last days required her absolute devotion to him.  In spite of this, the garden studio was not wholly forsaken, and nearly every day she accomplished something there.  After her husband’s death she had a long illness.  On her recovery she returned to The Hague and took the studio which had been that of the artist Mauve.

The life of the town was wearisome to her, but she found a compensation in her re-union with her old friends, and with occasional visits to the heath she passed most of her remaining years in the city.

Her favorite subjects were landscapes with birch and beech trees, and the varying phases of the heath and of solitary and unfrequented scenes.  Her works are all in private collections.  Among them are “The Forester’s Cottage,” “Autumn in Doorwerth,” “The Old Birch,” and the “Old Oaks of Wodan at Sunset.”

BOZNANSKA, OLGA. Born in Cracow, where she was a pupil of Matejko.  Later, in Munich, she studied with Kricheldorf and Duerr.  Her mother was a French woman, and critics trace both Polish and French characteristics in her work.

She paints portraits and genre subjects.  She is skilful in seizing salient characteristics, and her chief aim is to preserve the individuality of her sitters and models.  She skilfully manages the side-lights, and by this means produces strong effects.  After the first exhibition of her pictures in Berlin, her “God-given talent” was several times mentioned by the art critics.

At Munich she made a good impression by her pictures exhibited in 1893 and 1895; at the Exposition in Paris, 1889, her portrait and a study in pastel were much admired and were generously praised in the art journals.