Schetsboek met 9 bladen Possibly 1881 - 1885

This is George Hendrik Breitner’s sketchbook with nine sheets, made with paper and bound with thread. A simple object, really, but let’s consider the implications of its manufacture. The paper itself represents a massive shift in the accessibility of artmaking. Once, surfaces to draw on were rare and expensive, like vellum made from animal skin. But by Breitner’s time, paper was an industrial product. This meant that artists, even those of modest means, could record their observations of the world in real time. We can see here the marbling of the cover, probably achieved with a technique of floating inks on a liquid bath, and transferring that to the paper. Even the binding, sewn together with thread, is evidence of a kind of labor that extends beyond the artist’s studio. So, next time you see a humble sketchbook like this, remember that it embodies a whole network of human effort, and a democratization of artmaking that continues to this day.