Schetsboek met 37 bladen

This is the cover of a sketchbook with 37 pages by George Hendrik Breitner, held at the Rijksmuseum. Breitner lived in a time of immense social change in the Netherlands. As industrialization grew, so did the working class. In his work, Breitner was less interested in the grand narratives of the Dutch Masters, and more invested in depicting the lives of ordinary people, often from marginalized communities. This sketchbook may offer a glimpse into Breitner’s observations of daily life, jotted down in a personal and immediate way. The artist has written a list of words and phrases, including ‘Pijpm macht’, ‘Roken uit Acti’ and ‘Kinders op un reitis’. We see a fleeting vision of children, ‘kinders’, in motion and the suggestion of working class spaces through references to smoking (‘Roken’). It serves as a reminder of the individual stories that make up the fabric of a society. It’s an intimate glimpse into the artist’s mind and perhaps also into the world of the working class in Amsterdam.