Liggende vrouw 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing of a reclining woman with graphite on paper. I can only imagine Israels in the studio with the model, maybe the two of them are talking, or maybe they are just there together in silence. It’s intimate, you know? Just to be in the room with someone when they are that undressed. In this work, he seems to be capturing the intimacy between an artist and a model. Look at the casualness of it all, those lines. They are so loose and fast. It's like he's trying to capture the essence of her pose, the way her body falls into itself when she relaxes. And I love how he’s not trying to make her perfect or anything. It feels so real, so human. Like, here she is, just being herself, and he's there to witness it. You see this kind of thing in other painters, like Degas, who seem to capture something real, not something posed. It makes you wonder how many other artists were drawing reclining women in their studios at the time.