Building Site c. 1900

George Hendrik Breitner captured this view of a construction site on canvas, though the exact date remains unknown. Breitner, who worked and lived in Amsterdam, painted this image when the city was undergoing rapid expansion and modernization. The painting depicts a man and a horse hauling timber across a muddy landscape. The scene is filled with laborers, all anonymous, working in the construction of the new city. The emotional tone of the painting is somber. It refrains from romanticizing the urban development, and instead, it depicts the raw, physical labor involved in the construction of a modernizing city. Breitner was known for his interest in capturing the lives of ordinary people, and he often focused on the working class. Here, he develops an alternative narrative to the then-conventional heroic depictions of labor. Instead, he portrays the toil and grit required to build the city. The painting invites reflection on the human and animal labor that lies beneath urban progress.