 Although written in the form of a conventional travel narrative, the "Briefe" constituted in fact a major contribution to the theoretical literature on art history.As Michael Podro has written, Schnaase's first book

is the principal transposition of Hegel's thought into the general discussion of the development of art...In his "Niederländische Briefe" Schnaase responded to two difficulties in Hegel's "Aesthetics"; the assumption that past works of art were definitively understood from the point of view of the present, and that art was representative of its culture than contributing to it.