Paard op het Rokin te Amsterdam c. 1903

George Hendrik Breitner made this drawing of a horse on the Rokin in Amsterdam with graphite on paper. It’s a sketch, really just the bare bones of a thing, and I love seeing the artist’s thinking laid bare like this. Look at the texture of the paper and the way Breitner uses line to suggest form and movement. On the left page, the lines seem to suggest the mass of a horse and a building, but on the right, you can see how little he needs to capture the image. The horse, right in the centre, is only described by a handful of strokes. It reminds me a little of Manet, but the process seems more like Degas, who also loved to sketch horses and dancers, capturing a fleeting moment in time with the bare minimum of marks. Art isn’t about the exact representation of a thing, it’s about how we see and feel, and I think this sketch captures that idea perfectly.