An Elegant Lady Strolling along a Canal in Amsterdam

George Hendrik Breitner photographed Amsterdam constantly and painted it in weather nobody else bothered with. Wet cobbles, grey canals, horses hauling through slush, demolition sites on the edge of the expanding city. He wanted to be, in his own phrase, the painter of the people. The photographs were working tools, thousands of them, used for poses and street detail rather than exhibited. That practice gives the paintings their off balance framing: figures cut by the edge, backs turned, movement caught rather than posed. He also painted a long series of women in kimonos, which sit oddly against the street work and were partly a response to the Japanese craze then sweeping Europe. Van Gogh knew him in The Hague and the two drew together in the streets, though their paths diverged sharply afterwards.