Group of Houses

George Hendrik Breitner's 'Group of Houses' (1901) is a study in the specific character of Amsterdam's residential architecture — the seventeenth-century Dutch Golden Age canal houses that formed the visual character of the city's historic core, their stepped gables, red brick facades, and varied heights creating a distinctively Dutch urban streetscape. Breitner's engagement with Amsterdam's architectural fabric as a subject went beyond the famous canal and bridge views to include the specific texture of the city's domestic architecture.

Breitner renders the group of houses with his characteristic broad, direct handling — the specific architectural character of the Dutch houses depicted with the summary observation of a painter who knew the city's fabric intimately. His handling of the brick tones, the window rhythms, and the quality of the Amsterdam light on the facades creates the specific visual character of the Dutch urban house group. The composition's informal quality — the houses seen as they stood rather than arranged for compositional effect — was characteristic of his direct approach.