Studies van vrouwen 1886 - 1923

These studies of women by George Hendrik Breitner at the Rijksmuseum are alive with energy, rendered in graphite with decisive, searching lines. You can almost feel the artist circling his subject, trying to capture the essence of form with each stroke. I imagine Breitner in his studio, squinting at his models, charcoal in hand, muttering to himself as he works. He's not trying to create a perfect likeness, but a feeling, an impression. The hurried marks across the page, the shading, communicate more than any photorealistic painting ever could. They remind me of sketches by Degas, but rougher, more immediate. The faces emerge from the page like ghosts, floating in a sea of graphite. It's a reminder that painting is always a process of discovery, of searching and questioning. What is a face anyway? What does it mean to capture the essence of a person on paper? These are the questions that haunt every artist, and it’s encouraging to see that even masters like Breitner grapple with them. It makes you think about drawing as a practice of looking, not seeing.