Rijtuigen op de Dam te Amsterdam, gezien vanuit het Koninklijk Paleis c. 1893s - 1903s

George Hendrik Breitner made this sketch of carriages in Dam Square, Amsterdam, with charcoal. It’s a real tangle of lines, isn't it? Like a cat's cradle. The lines are urgent, with lots of dark marks, rubbed into the page. I can imagine him in the palace window, quickly getting down what he sees, not worrying about the details. He's trying to capture the feeling of the place. You see the city opening up, and the rooftops in the distance. I bet he loved to sit there and look out – maybe dreaming, remembering the past, thinking about other artists. A lot of artists are thinking about each other, about what came before. It's a conversation, a way of building on what’s already happened. And maybe he would go on to make a painting based on this sketch, who knows? The sketch itself is the real thing, a captured moment, unresolved. It's like a note to himself.