Janus de Winter worked in the nineteenth-century tradition of the 'translation' of music into abstract shapes and colors and painted visions, auras 's and dreams. He was a follower of Wassily Kandinsky and developed a variant of lyrical expressionism . He was friends with the Utrecht painter Erich Wichmann . In October 1915 Wichman introduced him to painter and art critic Theo van Doesburg who for a time was very enthusiastic about de Winter's work. De Winter even influenced van Doesburg's work during this period - such as a number of expressive and highly charged pastels and self-portraits of this period including waanhoop (1915).