Gezicht in Amsterdam met rijtuigen c. 1903

This is a pencil sketch of a street scene in Amsterdam with carriages, made by George Hendrik Breitner sometime in his life. It's all about the bare bones here, a quick capture of a moment. The marks are so light and airy, like whispers on the page, with a sense of immediacy and directness in the way Breitner has used the pencil. I love the way he’s just scratched in the basic shapes. You can see the underlying paper with its lines, still visible through the sketch. Look at that little scribble up on the right, does that say houses? There's so much left unsaid, allowing our own imaginations to fill in the gaps. For me it echoes the work of Manet, another painter who understood the power of suggestion. Ultimately, it's about not pinning things down too tightly. It’s an invitation, not a declaration.