Studie, mogelijk van gebouwen aan het water c. 1886 - 1923

George Hendrik Breitner made this study of buildings by the water with graphite on paper. You can see the push and pull, the shifting that happens when someone's trying to capture a scene in front of them! I wonder what it was like for Breitner to sit there with his paper and graphite, trying to capture the light and form of these buildings by the water. There are such dark, smudgy areas against lighter lines, and it feels like he's really wrestling with the scene in front of him. It looks like such a quickly made study! But it reminds me that, as artists, we're all just trying to figure things out, to make sense of the world around us through our work. This kind of mark-making feels related to the sketchbooks of Delacroix. That dark passage there near the center left has so much feeling and energy in those marks. I imagine it could be such an adventure to find a new way of expression, of playing with form and light.