Paard en wagen c. 1900 - 1923

This quick sketch of a horse and carriage was made by George Hendrik Breitner, probably in one of his notebooks, using a simple graphite stick. The marks are so immediate, aren’t they? A flurry of lines and smudges trying to catch a fleeting moment, like a memory just forming. Notice how the drawing sits on the page, almost floating. Breitner captures the essence of the subject with so few lines, it's really all about suggestion. The thickness of the graphite gives the drawing a real physical presence, a kind of roughness. Look at the way the wheels are rendered; they’re not perfect circles, but scribbled, energetic bursts, indicating movement. This reminds me a bit of Daumier's quick sketches of Parisian life, that same sense of immediacy, and that nothing is ever finished, it just keeps going. And isn’t that what art, like life, is all about?