Stoomschip op het IJ te Amsterdam c. 1903

This sketchbook drawing of a steamship in Amsterdam was made by George Hendrik Breitner with pencil on paper. Look at the frenetic scribbles, the way the lines vibrate! It’s like Breitner's trying to capture not just what he sees, but the feeling of the scene. You can almost hear the clang and clamor of the ship. It's all about gesture here. Take that cluster of lines near the center, a thicket of diagonals that resolve into what I think is the ship’s rigging, or maybe scaffolding? It's so raw, so immediate, you can feel the energy of his hand moving across the page. It’s not about getting it “right”, but about the act of seeing and recording. Breitner's approach here reminds me of some of the later Impressionists, like maybe a drawing by Manet, who were more interested in the sensation of a thing than its precise depiction. For Breitner, and for art in general, it's all about the process of trying to figure something out, rather than arriving at a fixed conclusion.