George Hendrik Breitner: The Yellow Riders (1885-1886); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

During the second phase of his career, George Hendrik Breitner, would gain fame as a brilliant observer of modern city life in fin de siècle Amsterdam (see my post of 22 May 2010 for more on this). Up until 1886, though, Breitner lived on the west coast of Holland, near The Hague, where he took his inspiration mainly from the landscape surrounding him. In these days, Breitner considered specializing in military painting and one of his favorite subjects was mounted soldiers, exercising in the dunes. He really made an effort to reproduce the horse movements as realistically as possible. Photography had recently revealed that galloping horses moved their legs quite differently than previously assumed.
This painting, The Yellow Riders (the title refers to the color of the soldiers’ uniform), proves that Breitner was strongly influenced by contemporary French painting. He shared their preference for working ‘en plein air’, to obtain a more lively effect in his work. To achieve this goal, he also used photographs and sketches. The Rijksmuseum owns a drawing by Breitner that depicts nearly the same formation of horses as we can see in this painting.
Another common point of Breitner and the French modernists was their interest in capturing reality, not as a self-evident fact, but as a sensory experience at any given moment. The resulting artwork should evoke sensations beyond the visual sense alone. They were convinced that, when looking intensively at Breitner’s masterpiece, one could smell the horses, feel their heat and hear their noises.