Twee kinderen in een winkel in de Sloterdijkstraat te Amsterdam c. 1902

This is a pencil drawing by George Hendrik Breitner, showing two children in a shop in Amsterdam. I love the directness of the marks here. The sketchiness invites you into Breitner’s process. It feels like he’s thinking out loud with his pencil. Look at how he uses simple lines to suggest the figures of the children and the architecture around them. There's a beautiful tension between what’s defined and what’s left unsaid. It's less about capturing a perfect likeness and more about conveying a feeling, an atmosphere. The shading on the wall suggests the atmosphere inside this intimate scene. You can see echoes of artists like Daumier here, in its raw honesty, but there is also something very modern about the immediacy of the drawing. It’s an open invitation.