Twee staande vrouwen, mogelijk op straat c. 1886 - 1934

Curator: Looking at this small sketchbook page—Two Standing Women, Possibly on the Street, from around the turn of the century by Isaac Israels—I am immediately transported to a hazy afternoon in the city. There's something wonderfully immediate about it. Editor: Immediate, certainly, but also fragmentary. Notice how the composition is bisected? On the left, these figures are rendered with gestural urgency—strokes forming the suggestion of form, while the right side presents what appears to be an architectural void. It is as if one drawing is butting heads with another, almost opposing scene. Curator: That tension is fascinating. It makes me think of fleeting encounters, like seeing someone for a brief moment on the street and trying to capture the feeling that evokes. Maybe the right panel signifies a departure, like when one drifts from a reverie and forgets all previous ideas that did not manage to stick? Editor: The semiotic play is compelling: heavy, smudged marks versus a stark absence, figurative chaos opposing architectural rigidity. The figures, though scarcely defined, occupy space with a vibrant energy. We discern details that evoke early photographic images like darkened outlines and bright interior forms. Curator: Absolutely. I can almost hear the sounds of the city rising from those sketchy lines—street vendors, horse-drawn carriages, chattering passersby. It invites the viewer to co-create the artwork, filling in the gaps with their own imagination and lived experiences. Maybe it can show the viewer an intimacy of a shared past time, much like how people connect over shared experience that once were unique, but now are commonplace. Editor: A curious proposition, given the piece's evident incompleteness and the rather obscure spatial dynamics introduced on its right. Does its appeal lie in suggestion or potential, perhaps more so than realized artistic design? In essence, it appears that we observe not a final statement but an act of artistic thinking itself. Curator: Well, maybe the act of thinking IS the point. After all, what’s more raw than the artist letting you peek into their sketchbook, into their mind? This little fragment almost makes you wonder what they could have created at their prime! Editor: Precisely, the fascination resides perhaps more in its enigmatic gesture toward artistic production. And indeed, a glimpse into unrefined potential is a glimpse into the allure of the work as idea itself.