Schetsboek met 46 bladen vervaardigd te Noord-Holland en Utrecht c. 1902 - 1914

This little sketchbook, made by George Hendrik Breitner in the provinces of Noord-Holland and Utrecht, it's like a secret garden. The cover itself is a landscape—dark furrows over pale, mossy ground, like an aerial view of plowed fields after a rain. I wonder what it felt like for Breitner to carry this around. Was it always in his pocket, ready for a quick sketch of whatever caught his eye? I imagine him pausing on a busy street, whipping it out to capture a fleeting moment, the essence of a figure in motion. Sketchbooks are interesting, aren’t they? They're not precious like a finished painting, but they're full of raw energy, experiments, and mistakes. It's where artists work through their ideas.