Studie 1880 - 1882

George Hendrik Breitner made this drawing with graphite on paper. This is about as direct a process as you can get: the artist simply taking a piece of graphite, and rubbing it onto the paper. This immediacy is very much part of the appeal. The artist quickly captured the image they saw before them. You can sense the speed of the artist's hand, the pressure they applied to the graphite to achieve different tonal values and textures. But don’t think that this process is artless. Quite the contrary. Breitner was a master of understatement. He lets the most basic of materials express a fleeting, complex impression of the world. Drawings like this remind us that the line between “high art” and the most elemental of activities is an artificial one.