Artillery on Maneuver c. 1880 - 1923

Curator: Right, let's talk about this scene: George Hendrik Breitner's "Artillery on Maneuver," painted sometime between 1880 and 1923. It resides here at the Rijksmuseum. What grabs you first about this piece? Editor: It feels unresolved. Like a fleeting moment caught mid-breath. I sense the transience of movement but it’s kind of haunting—what is that brownish gloom? Curator: It is haunting. The symbols are heavy here. Those are horses, symbols of raw power. In almost every culture, the horse appears as a symbol of warriors and triumph. Yet they're burdened pulling artillery. Their symbolic energy is shackled, I almost want to read them as allegories for our psychological state. Editor: Allegories, huh? That's a hefty claim. But it fits with the hazy atmosphere Breitner's created. The naturalistic tone and slightly muted color palette add to that sense of melancholy but look how he catches the light. Those pops of bright colour! What medium do you reckon he used? Looks like a watercolor bleed with a hint of oil paint on canvas. Curator: Perhaps, yes. It’s about feeling over fine detail. Each horse is reduced to these strokes, their faces completely void of expression, the uniforms so roughly defined that each of the riders seems indistinct, one melts into another, I wonder, what commentary might Breitner making here about individuality, dehumanization, industrialisation, war… the human condition itself? Editor: Wow. Heavy thoughts indeed. Maybe it's the slightly unfinished quality of the piece that brings this out? The fact it appears like an underpainting and yet it’s complete—is he saying that these figures are works in progress, not finished people but parts of a greater work, with good or bad implications? What is war? What is mankind? Is that it? Curator: Perhaps. It also may be just that these questions hang suspended, inviting us to keep on asking. Thank you for sharing your perspectives; it makes one see the art a bit anew.