Schetsboek met 45 bladen 1910

This sketchbook with 45 pages was made by George Hendrik Breitner sometime between 1857 and 1923. The outside is giving me a feeling of age, like one of those old marble notebooks that have been through the wars. It’s a dark brown with a bit of mottling - a kind of cloud of disturbance - and the spine is so plainly bound. I wonder what Breitner was thinking when he chose this book. Did he pick it out specifically, or was it just something lying around? I try to imagine him carrying it around the city. What’s inside? What ideas did he have in his head that he wanted to get down on paper? It’s a portal into the artist's mind. Artists are always having a conversation with each other, inspiring each other’s creativity. Every mark, every stroke, is part of this ongoing dialogue, embracing ambiguity and uncertainty, allowing for multiple interpretations.