Construction Site in Amsterdam (c. 1902): Art, History and Details

Construction Site in Amsterdam (c. 1902) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is George Hendrik Breitner (Dutch, 1857–1923).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

A leader of the Dutch Impressionists, Breitner based this painting on a series of photographs he took of a construction site in Amsterdam. Although seemingly executed rapidly on site, the painting was in fact carefully composed in the studio. Aided by his own photographs and sketches, Breitner portrayed a city in transition. Like his friend Vincent van Gogh, Breitner admired naturalist literature and was determined to become a “painter of the people.”

Object facts

• Title: Construction Site in Amsterdam
• Date: c. 1902
• Creator attribution: George Hendrik Breitner (Dutch, 1857–1923)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on fabric
• Dimensions: Framed: 80 x 100 x 8.6 cm (31 1/2 x 39 3/8 x 3 3/8 in.); Unframed: 60.5 x 80.7 cm (23 13/16 x 31 3/4 in.)
• Collection: Mod Euro - Painting 1800-1960
• Department: Modern European Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1985.145

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "Year in Review for 1985." The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art LXXIII, no. 2 (February, 1986): 27-71.
• Neet, Jane. “Mondrian’s ‘Chrysanthemum.’” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 7 (September 1987): 282–303.
• Bergsma,Rieta, Paul Hefting, and Jan Frederik Heijbroek. George Hendrik Breitner, 1857-1923: schilderijen, tekeningen, foto's. Bussum, Netherlands: Thoth, 1994.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.