Woman with a Hat and a Man’s Arm with a Drinking Bowl, George Hendrik Breitner, c. 1881 - c. 1887
Breitner may have drawn this sketch during the Japanese evening at Pulchri Studio, the artists’ association in The Hague. As can be read on the poster elsewhere in this gallery, the programme included a Japanese tea ceremony. Here we see a detail of an arm (in a wide, turned-up sleeve) and a hand holding a tea bowl. Drawn – upside down – at the bottom of the sheet is a city girl: there is nothing Japanese about that.