What makes this painter so special for me?… Possibly because he made one of the paintings i truly admired when i was young.
One of the first times i visited the Rijskmuseum and the Stedelijk Museum i encountered this beautiful woman, lying on a couch, wearing nothing but a red japanese kimono. Everything is the paintings was new to me. Dutch impressionism, the loose touch with the brush, the high details and the sensuality in the painting made it beautiful to me. What i did not know at that time, is that Breitner was one of the first to use photography as a start for his paintings and this girl in a red kimono ( name was Geesje Kwak , a famous model at that time) would be painted in many versions and depicted on many paintings. There are “Red Kimono” paintings in the collections of the Rijksmuseum, Stedelijk Museum, Museum Twenthe, Teylers Museum. A few years ago there was this exhibition in the Rijksmuseum on all these versions of the girl in the red kimono. Unfortunately i did not visit it , but i still have some excellent catalogues on Breitner available at www. ftn-books.com and study this wonderful painting.
These and other titles on Breitner are available at www. ftn-books.com
