Twee vrouwen, mogelijk lopend c. 1886 - 1934

Curator: This piece, entitled "Twee vrouwen, mogelijk lopend," or "Two Women, Possibly Walking," is a pencil drawing on paper by Isaac Israels. It’s currently held here at the Rijksmuseum and dates roughly from 1886 to 1934. Editor: It feels incredibly fleeting, doesn’t it? Like catching a glimpse of something, a whisper of movement almost lost. It reminds me of half-remembered dreams, faces blurring. Curator: The impressionistic style certainly contributes to that sense. Israels, working within that broader movement, captured modern life with a specific focus on its bustling energy. The figures are rendered with quick, suggestive lines, implying movement. It makes me think of the increased autonomy women were experiencing at this time, venturing out into public spaces more freely, a challenge to more static, domestic roles. Editor: I see that. But honestly, when I look at it, I mostly just feel how easily we’re all gone, how quickly the present becomes the past. All those wispy lines are more about erasure than about permanence. Like the women are already fading, becoming ghosts on the page. Or maybe they are rushing past so quickly that they already seem to exist only in our memories. Curator: That interpretation adds a layer of complexity, connecting the formal elements—the linework—to the thematic content. We can consider the possible social and historical context behind female transience in that era. Are these figures truly empowered by their mobility, or still subject to constraints that leave them vulnerable, perhaps symbolically represented by the artwork’s ephemerality? Editor: That’s a pretty grim reading. Perhaps the women in the picture are merely on the way to something joyous, like a festival! Regardless, I find something liberating in its casual looseness; as though the drawing is just off for a casual jaunt itself. Curator: Indeed, by contemplating both the figures and the implications of Israels’s mark-making here, we encounter art’s capability of revealing the layers that constitutes our existence in time, socially, politically, even emotionally. Editor: Well, next time I am feeling gloomy, I will have to wander back and see if these ladies cheer me up, with a festival, maybe, or even just a fleeting gesture, it'll surely make a difference.