Zittende vrouw met hoed, in profiel 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing of a seated woman in profile with pencil on paper, and it now lives in the Rijksmuseum. It’s a study, a quick sketch, you know? I can imagine Israels in the flow, rapidly laying down lines, trying to capture the fleeting presence of the woman before him. The strokes are light, tentative, suggesting the form without fully defining it. I wonder what was going through his mind? Perhaps he was captivated by the elegant silhouette of her hat or the way the light fell across her face. The composition feels unfinished, like a fragment of a larger scene. But there's something beautiful about the immediacy and the intimacy of it. It’s like we’re catching a glimpse of the artist's thought process, witnessing the birth of an idea on paper. It makes me want to grab my own sketchbook and start drawing, to see where the lines take me. That's how the conversation of art keeps going, each of us building on what came before, isn’t it?