Gezicht op gebouwen te Amsterdam en de sloop van de Winkel van Sinkel aan de Nieuwendijk 1903

George Hendrik Breitner made this sketch of buildings in Amsterdam, and the demolition of the Winkel van Sinkel on the Nieuwendijk, with pencil on paper. Breitner’s all about the line here, the way it captures a moment, the bones of the architecture. There's a kind of urgency to it, like he’s trying to grab the scene before it disappears. He’s not precious, you know? The lines are all there on the surface, visible – the corrections, the quick decisions, everything. Look at the way he suggests depth, by varying the weight of the pencil. There’s this lovely back-and-forth between the solid, defined edges of the buildings, and the more suggestive, ephemeral lines around them. You see hints of what Walter Sickert was doing at the time, capturing the mood of a place through these kinds of quick, impressionistic renderings. It feels like he’s saying, “Here’s a moment, a feeling, before it’s gone,” and that's what art is all about, right?