" The interest shown at the beginning of the twentieth century in Parisian and Burgundian court illumination, which seemed the most perfect and significant aspect of this technique, had led historians to neglect northern productions, which seemed somewhat heavy, even rustic, by comparison with the former. Modern sensibility, influenced by expressionist traditions which western countries are beginning to appreciate, is allowing us a better understanding of the true quality of this art. The crudeness is due in part to economic problems: the absence of wealthy patronage and the need for cheapness. But it was also a matter of principle, of preferring the spontaneity of a gesture, the immediacy of an expressive form, to exactness and miniature description. "

― Albert Châtelet