Zittende vrouw met paraplu 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this sketch of a seated woman with an umbrella with pencil on paper. Look at that flurry of marks, they suggest a figure sitting perhaps in a cafe, holding an umbrella, maybe waiting out a storm. I like to imagine Israels sitting across from this woman, rapidly capturing her likeness, feeling the pressure to work quickly before she moves or leaves. You get a sense of the artist's hand moving across the paper, trying to catch a fleeting moment in time. The lines are so immediate. Israels was part of the Amsterdam Impressionism movement, so you can see him playing with light and shadow here, even with just a pencil. I always think of artists as being in conversation with one another, across time, and these sorts of expressive sketches remind me of the work of Manet, too. It's like they're all sharing ideas about how to see and capture the world around them.