Zittende vrouw in een interieur c. 1900 - 1923

George Hendrik Breitner captured a seated woman indoors with charcoal, sometime between 1880 and 1923, and it feels like a stolen moment, doesn't it? Look at these restless lines, scratching out the form, almost impatiently. You can feel him circling around the figure, trying to capture the weight of her body, the set of her shoulders. It's as if he's trying to trap her on the page. Did he know her? Was she waiting for him? The charcoal feels dry and immediate, and the paper is almost like skin. I wonder if he had other drawings like this – was he working out something in his mind, a feeling about bodies and space? Painters are always in conversation with one another, across time, working out the same old problems of how to see, how to feel, and how to translate that into a mark. It's an ongoing dialogue that never gets old!