Afmetingen 1896

George Hendrik Breitner created this notebook page, titled "Afmetingen," with pen and ink sometime between 1880-1920. It's a peek into the artist's process, a glimpse behind the scenes of artistic production in Amsterdam. The page is filled with numbers and notes, seemingly dimensions for paintings or studies. Breitner was known for his gritty, urban scenes of Amsterdam, and this notebook page offers a different perspective of his work. The stamps at the bottom of the page identify this as a page from the artist's personal notebook. It's a document that likely remained within the artist's circle during his lifetime. Now in the Rijksmuseum, this gives a privileged look at the working methods of an artist in his studio. To understand Breitner fully, we need to look at the social conditions that shaped his art, the rise of urbanism in the Netherlands, and the institutional structures, like the art market, that supported artists like him.