Studieblad met kruiwagens c. 1902

George Hendrik Breitner made this study sheet of wheelbarrows with graphite on paper at an unknown date. There’s something so pure and simple about this page full of wheelbarrows! You get the sense that Breitner was really trying to figure them out. What do they look like from different angles? How do all the parts fit together? I really feel for him; it’s difficult to draw something over and over again! There’s a real obsessive quality to this sheet, but also an economy. The lines are so simple, and there's something so beautiful and open about that. It is almost as if the bare minimum is all that is required to capture the wheelbarrow and the labour it represents. Sometimes it's like this in my own practice; you might think that you are just capturing something, but really it's capturing you!