阿姆斯特丹皇宫街的辛格尔运河桥

Breitner walked Amsterdam with one of the new hand cameras, snapping wet streets and passers-by, and several of his photographs survive for this very scene. It shows in the painting. The woman strides straight at us, the frame cuts her companions off at the edges, and the whole thing has the accidental crop of a snapshot rather than the arranged look of a studio. There is a small secret in her. Breitner first painted her as a servant girl, but after a sour review his dealer pressed him to promote her, so he turned the maid into an elegant lady in a fur-trimmed coat. He finished the canvas around 1896, when photography was still young enough that painting from it felt almost like cheating. Behind her the grey Amsterdam winter closes off the bridge.