Rokende man c. 1886 - 1890

George Hendrik Breitner made this drawing, Rokende man, with graphite on paper, and it is now held at the Rijksmuseum. Breitner was interested in representing the lives of ordinary people in the Netherlands. He was known for his street photography, but he also made many drawings and paintings of working-class people. In this sketch, the identity of the sitter is unknown, but the scene evokes a sense of everyday life in Amsterdam in the late 19th and early 20th century. The loose and informal quality of the sketch suggests that Breitner was interested in capturing a fleeting moment. This sketch captures the sitter in a moment of leisure, smoking a pipe. Tobacco use was common among working-class men at the time. Breitner was critical of social norms, and his images sometimes challenged the status quo. To understand more about Breitner’s sketchbooks, we might look at the institutional history of Dutch art academies in this period. What place did drawing have in their curricula? How did academic drawing influence the style of artists like Breitner?