Schetsboek met 45 bladen 1910

This sketchbook with 45 pages was made by George Hendrik Breitner sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. The cover is a marbled brown, a seemingly random pattern, but of course, someone made that, controlled it. Which is something I often think about with sketchbooks, especially old ones: what level of intention did the artist bring to it? The marbling is so particular here, a tight tangle of darker brown set against a creamy background, almost like a microscopic view of some strange organism. Think about the relationship between the artist’s hand, the tools they used, and the surface itself. The texture promises an intimacy, the kind you get when an artist is just messing around, feeling their way through ideas. This reminds me of Gerhard Richter's colour charts, where he let industrial processes determine the arrangement of colors. Ultimately, this object is a reminder that art is an ongoing conversation, a negotiation between control and chance, intention and accident.