Gebouw met tuitgevel 1908

George Hendrik Breitner made this drawing of a building with a gable roof, probably in Amsterdam, with a stick of charcoal. I love how the building is represented in relation to the street—you can almost feel the hand of the artist in each mark. I imagine the artist standing on the other side of the street with his sketchbook, squinting at the building. I bet he was thinking about tone, and massing, trying to capture the building's essence in just a few lines. Look at the roof, which has these really soft, feathery marks—you can feel the pressure of the charcoal as it moves across the page. Breitner was part of a generation of painters who were interested in capturing the everyday, and in this drawing, you can see that he’s interested in the realness of the city. It reminds me of some of the drawings I made in art school! It’s as if he's saying that even a simple building can be beautiful if you really look at it.