Aangemeerde boot c. 1903

George Hendrik Breitner made this drawing of a moored boat, location and date unknown, with pencil on paper. It’s all about the sketch here, the bones of the boat, the essence of ‘boatness’ captured in a flurry of marks. Breitner's approach is so process-oriented, each line feels like a thought being worked out on paper. You can almost feel his hand moving, deciding, correcting. Look at the mast, how it's not one solid line, but a series of tentative strokes. Each one adds to the overall form. There's a beautiful ambiguity here – is it the mast itself, or the space around it? It's like he's saying, "Here's an idea of a boat, let's see where it goes." It reminds me a bit of Cy Twombly's drawings, where the energy of the mark is as important as what it represents.