View in Amsterdam 1880 - 1923

George Hendrik Breitner made this small painting, *View in Amsterdam*, using oils with a monochrome palette. It's all greys and blacks and whites, but not neatly mixed, instead dragged and dabbed and smeared across the surface. You can see it’s been built up, layer upon layer. I can almost imagine the artist, maybe, grabbing a brush, loading it up with paint, and then – whack – laying down a mark, then another, and another. Just like the city itself, the painting seems to have emerged from a process of trial, error, and intuition. Was he thinking about Whistler, I wonder? That dark shape of a person. What are they looking at? Are they cold? Is that their horse? The rough texture of the paint gives the whole image a kind of gritty, urban feel. The heavy, dark strokes feel like they might capture the feeling of a rainy day in Amsterdam, and how that feels. Painters are always having a conversation, across time, with each other, inspiring each other's work and helping us to see the world in new ways.