Winkelpui in de Kalverstraat te Amsterdam c. 1893s - 1903s

George Hendrik Breitner made this drawing of a shop front in Amsterdam with what looks like pencil and maybe some charcoal. I can almost see him there, sketching in the street, probably on the go. It's such a quick, pared-down scene. Look at the dark, scribbled lines massing together to suggest something like an awning. I wonder, was he trying to capture a fleeting moment, the light shifting, a figure passing by? Did he just want to get the angles right? There is a sense of the city’s energy in those scribbled lines. And, yet, the drawing has its own rhythm: a conversation between the dark, insistent marks and the open, quiet spaces. Think of other artists who worked similarly. I wonder if this work might have been a starting point for other, later, paintings by Breitner? Artists are always in conversation with one another, after all.