View in the Woods c. 1880 - 1923

George Hendrik Breitner made this painting, View in the Woods, probably en plein air. Look at the brushstrokes! They are like intuitive jabs of browns, blacks and greens; a symphony of dark tones punctuated by fleeting touches of light. I imagine Breitner outdoors wrestling with the canvas and trying to capture that certain something. What was he thinking? I feel like he was trying to find something permanent, or something fleeting. Maybe the challenge of capturing a landscape in all its fullness. Breitner has applied the paint in layers, in thin veils and thicker dollops. The textures are so varied that they draw me into the scene. There’s a certain tension in the brushstrokes—a sense of immediacy, as if the painting itself is an event unfolding before our eyes. Painters are always in conversation, you know? Each stroke is a response, a question, a continuation of this wild, beautiful, and often messy dialogue.