Paardentrams c. 1886 - 1923

George Hendrik Breitner made this black chalk drawing of horse-drawn trams and buildings somewhere, sometime. It looks like a fleeting moment, as if hastily captured, doesn't it? Like a note jotted down on a scrap of paper or the back of an envelope. I think about Breitner holding the chalk, his hand flying across the page, trying to catch the rhythm of the city. The energy of those lines, scratched into the surface, evokes the movement of the trams and the hustle and bustle of urban life. See how those vertical marks create depth, how the horizontal ones flatten the picture plane? You could say the painting is unfinished, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe he was just interested in the process of seeing. When an artwork looks raw, it allows us to witness the artist's thinking, feeling, and seeing.