Kar 1886 - 1923

George Hendrik Breitner made "Kar", a charcoal sketch, here at the Rijksmuseum. Breitner is feeling out form, mass. These aren't lines, they're gestures, you know? Like a dance of the hand trying to wrangle the world onto the page. Look closely, and you can see the way the charcoal sort of crumbles and drags across the paper. It's not about smooth illusionism, it's about the fight, the process of trying to see and then put something down. That mark there, on the bottom right - it's like he just dug the charcoal in, a little explosion of dark. It's not precious, it's raw. Breitner, like Manet, was trying to capture the fleeting moments of modern life. It's this searching, this willingness to let the messiness of the world in, that makes his work so alive.