Werkzaamheden in de bouwput Sint Agnietenstraat te Amsterdam 1903

George Hendrik Breitner made this small oil on wood panel, featuring earth tones, somewhere in Amsterdam. I’m imagining him out and about, on the street, quickly trying to capture the muddy building site. The thin, washy paint gives it this sense of a fleeting impression. Did he just want to evoke the color of the soil? I know that painters are often trying to represent something they're seeing, but there is also something very beautiful about what happens to the paint itself when it's just spread out. Like, what does it mean to spread mud-colored paint on a board? It’s like he's both representing something and also just wallowing in the materiality of paint, which is something I can definitely relate to. It reminds me a little of Courbet, who also loved to paint mud and dirt, and of course, all painting is in conversation with other painting.