Abklatsch van de krijttekening op blad 12 verso 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this work, Abklatsch van de krijttekening op blad 12 verso, with chalk on paper, though when exactly, we're not sure. What I love is that the title tells us exactly what we’re looking at, a rubbing taken from a chalk drawing, like a ghost of the original. The image has this delicate, almost ethereal quality. The texture is all over. It’s a constellation of tiny marks, a kind of soft disintegration or decay, which speaks to the work’s status as a copy, once removed from the original drawing. Look closely and you can see the subtle gradations of tone, where the chalk has been more or less heavily applied. It's like a memory slowly fading, isn't it? This interest in capturing fleeting moments, in the ephemeral, reminds me of Whistler’s atmospheric nocturnes. Both artists explore the beauty of suggestion, finding poetry in the indistinct and transient, reminding us that art is often about what is felt, rather than what is seen.