Nieuwe Teertuinen te Amsterdam, gezien vanaf Prinseneiland c. 1898 - 1914

George Hendrik Breitner created this drawing, Nieuwe Teertuinen te Amsterdam, gezien vanaf Prinseneiland, using graphite on paper. What strikes me most is the apparent speed of the mark making. There’s no sense of preciousness here. Instead, you can imagine the artist quickly trying to capture the scene before him. Look at the variation in tone, from light, feathery scribbles, to the areas of darker hatching which describe the buildings in the foreground. It is the varying pressure of the artist's hand which creates this effect. The material simplicity allows for an immediacy of vision. It reminds me of Cy Twombly, in the way that it presents a kind of thinking-through-drawing, or writing-through-drawing. There’s no right or wrong way of seeing the world, but this piece invites us to see the world as an ongoing, generative conversation. A conversation we can participate in, or simply sit back and listen to.