Gebouw op een brug in Dordrecht 1887 - 1889

George Hendrik Breitner made this sketch of a building on a bridge in Dordrecht with pencil on paper. It is a fleeting impression, captured with a minimum of fuss. The most obvious aspect is the sheer economy of means. The artist is not showing off his skill with a pencil, but rather using it as a tool, a way to capture information with speed. It has a social significance. Breitner was known for depicting the working classes of Amsterdam, and you could say that in a work like this, he is doing something similar. Rather than portraying working people directly, he is showing the built environment that is the setting for their lives. Breitner is not so much an artist here as a kind of visual anthropologist, recording the material facts of urban existence. And in doing so, he reminds us that even the humblest sketch can be a valuable document.