Landschap, mogelijk heidelandschap 1906

George Hendrik Breitner made this landscape, possibly a heathland, as a drawing at an unknown date, and you can see it now at the Rijksmuseum. It looks like he just went at it, you know? Scribbling down the essence of the place in graphite. I mean, look at the paper itself, it’s got this worn, almost stained quality which somehow makes the marks feel more immediate, more urgent, as if he was trying to catch something that was about to disappear. The lines are so direct, not fussy, but really, so descriptive. And then you have these darker, smudged areas, like the whole scene is about to fade into the mist. See that horizontal line near the bottom? It's like a quick, decisive stroke defining the foreground, pulling the whole thing together. It reminds me a little of James Ensor, especially some of his sketchier works. But, of course, Breitner has his own thing going on here. It’s really about letting the landscape speak through the simplest means. It’s not finished, but it says so much.