Gezicht op de Beulingstraat te Amsterdam c. 1902

George Hendrik Breitner made this drawing of the Beulingstraat in Amsterdam in the late 19th or early 20th century, probably en plein air. Just imagine him quickly trying to capture the essence of the street with just a few strokes of his pencil. The lines are all shaky and tentative, like he's not quite sure what he's seeing. You know that feeling of trying to get something down quickly before it disappears. I bet he was shivering with cold as he sketched. Look at how the building sort of emerges from the ground with only a few lines. See if the marks feel speedy, like they’re in a hurry. It reminds me of some of Philip Guston’s later works, where everything is so immediate and present. In painting, like in life, the goal is not to arrive, but to keep searching, to keep questioning, to keep drawing!