Zittende mannen en vrouwen c. 1915s - 1925s

Curator: Oh, I adore this peek into the creative process. This pencil drawing is called “Zittende mannen en vrouwen,” or “Sitting Men and Women,” attributed to Isaac Israels, probably sketched sometime between 1915 and 1925. What's your first take on it? Editor: There’s a restless energy about it, isn't there? Like catching figures on the periphery. A whisper of human presence, barely held on the page with these frantic, layered pencil marks. It feels unresolved, deliberately so. Curator: I see it as a search for form, you know? Israels was renowned for capturing fleeting moments of everyday life, and here he seems to be practicing, rapidly building up tonal masses to find his composition. Note the repetition of figures, the economy of line... Editor: That repetition resonates – it speaks to our own fleeting encounters with others, fragmented and incomplete. I'm intrigued by the absence of distinct detail, the universality achieved by denying us specifics. These aren't specific men and women, they’re archetypes. They recall something, or rather a universal emotional resonance. I feel the collective human. Curator: Archetypes, yes! And Israels' sketchbooks, I believe, served as a kind of visual laboratory. He’d test out ideas, arrangements of figures in space. You can sense him wrestling with the representation of reality on a two-dimensional surface, capturing that energy and presence through those frenzied markings. It is said he took inspiration in photography, like Degas... capturing slices of moments of reality. Editor: The diagonal hatching really contributes to the dynamism, suggesting constant movement or even the passage of time. The faces are almost swallowed by the hatching, anonymous. This focus creates a universalization and symbolic feeling, for a contemporary experience. Curator: I concur. This artwork reminds me that art is as much about the process of seeing as it is about the thing seen, maybe more... Editor: Indeed. It’s a powerful reminder that incompleteness can be a voice itself.