Gezicht in Amsterdam, mogelijk met de Amstelhof c. 1892 - 1923

This sketch of Amsterdam, possibly with the Amstelhof, was made by George Hendrik Breitner, and like many sketches, it's all about the energy of the moment, right? I mean, look at those scribbled lines—they’re not trying to be perfect, they're trying to capture the feeling of being there. The way the pencil scratches across the paper, it's like you can feel Breitner’s hand moving, almost impatiently, trying to keep up with what he's seeing. There’s a real physicality to it, a sense of touch, like you could reach out and feel the roughness of the paper and the softness of the graphite. And that one dark, bold stroke right there, cutting across the middle—it’s almost like a dare, a challenge to the rest of the drawing. You see this in drawings by Manet too, a kind of shorthand, a quick notation. It's like they are saying, "this is a record of a moment, not a finished thing."