Man, mogelijk rokend 1881 - 1883

Curator: Welcome! Here we have George Hendrik Breitner's "Man, mogelijk rokend," created between 1881 and 1883. It's a graphite drawing currently held at the Rijksmuseum. Editor: It feels fleeting, doesn't it? As if we've caught this man in a private, contemplative moment. The sketchiness adds to that sense of immediacy. Curator: Breitner was deeply embedded in the social fabric of Amsterdam. Think about the significance of a readily available and, frankly, cheap material like graphite enabling a swift capture of everyday life. This piece provides insight into how readily a worker might purchase this to reflect life outside of work as an artistic practice in leisure time. Editor: The pipe or cigarette, of course, symbolizes so much – comfort, contemplation, perhaps even a bit of rebellion against the burgeoning industrial world. I find a similar resonance with earlier, seventeenth-century Dutch genre painting featuring peasants smoking, carrying on tradition. It signifies status as the gentleman now smoking, as the everyday working class could partake. Curator: I appreciate your point about status; it reminds me to look to the social and economic changes occurring in Amsterdam. With the Industrial Revolution fully underway, such items would be much more widely distributed. This availability created changes in the type of working class who could afford such items to be depicted, democratizing such practices, in a way. Editor: Exactly, Breitner captures that shift, showing us that moment of quiet defiance within a rapidly changing world. Curator: Yes, his materials allowed him a closeness that the high arts do not reflect within his timeline. The intimacy afforded in capturing this figure's habits with widely used tools allows us to reflect on who we now consider high-art figures and how materials and accessibility influenced their capacity for this title. Editor: Thinking about the image’s psychological impact, this drawing echoes a modern angst, even now. I leave the audience with this reflection. Curator: Agreed. Breitner offers us an intriguing window into the lives and means of production in nineteenth-century Amsterdam.