Landschap met bebouwing 1910

This landscape with buildings by George Hendrik Breitner is made with a few simple strokes of graphite on paper. It's a really immediate and direct piece. It seems he's trying to catch something ephemeral, like a feeling or a fleeting impression, rather than describing something literal. The surface is really interesting, you can see how the graphite catches on the tooth of the paper. It creates this rough texture, and makes the drawing come alive. Look how the hatching that describes the buildings becomes frantic in places, as if he's working against the clock. But then the long vertical strokes on the right of the image are confident, direct. These looser marks offer a counterpoint to the architectural forms. Breitner's work often captures the gritty reality of urban life, and I think this drawing has that sensibility too, but it's also a study of the joy of mark making, not unlike the kind of thing Degas was up to. It reminds us that art is always an open ended investigation, with no fixed answers, and so we can really just embrace the ambiguity.