Vrouw en kind onder een boom 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing of a woman and child under a tree with a graphite pencil on paper. It’s a flurry of grey marks, dark and light, scribbled and softly shaded, that come together to suggest a scene. I love the abstractness, how the forms emerge from the chaos of lines. You can see the artist trying to capture the light filtering through the leaves, the weight of the figures, the feeling of a summer day. The pencil is his tool for mapping out the world, making marks that are as much about feeling as they are about seeing. I can imagine him working quickly, trying to catch the fleeting moment before the light changes or the child wanders off. The scribbled lines remind me of Cy Twombly, another artist who used drawing to create a sense of movement and energy. There is a sense of playfulness that invites us to fill in the blanks, to co-create the image with the artist. And it is a reminder that art is not just about representation, but about the act of making itself.