Figuren in de Baanbrugsteeg in Amsterdam 1917

George Hendrik Breitner made this sketch of the Baanbrugsteeg in Amsterdam with graphite on paper, and you can almost feel the artist's hand moving quickly, capturing the scene with an immediacy that's really engaging. The buildings loom over the figures below, a few quick strokes defining their forms, as though they were ghosts. I get the sense that Breitner wasn't aiming for precision, but rather for the feeling of being there, in that narrow Amsterdam alleyway. I wonder what was on his mind at the time? Did he want to capture the hustle of city life? Or perhaps he was interested in how light plays in the confined space? It makes me think about how artists are always in dialogue with each other, how they see the world and how they want to represent it. It is so raw and so human. The more you look, the more you see. What do you see?