Gezicht in Amsterdam, mogelijk het Damrak c. 1903

This little drawing, *Gezicht in Amsterdam, mogelijk het Damrak*, was made by George Hendrik Breitner at some point. You can see he used graphite, rapidly, intuitively almost, and he gives you the feeling of being there. It's interesting when an artist leaves the bones of the process visible, like Breitner does here. You get the feeling that you are looking at something he produced in a very short space of time. There are lots of lines that don't seem to "add up" in terms of the image. It is the kind of drawing where the erasures are also very present. In the bottom left corner there’s some kind of scribble which feels very free, it's a pure mark, and the contrast between this and the more constructed elements of the drawing create a really exciting visual tension. Breitner reminds me a little of Manet, in that both artists seek a sense of the real and the everyday. It has this feeling of an ongoing conversation, or exchange of ideas across time. And that reminds us that art is a form which embraces ambiguity over fixed meanings.