Moeder en kind in de bedstee en een staand meisje 1834 - 1911

Jozef Israëls made this drawing of a mother and child, with a standing girl, using graphite. Graphite pencils are humble tools, and the way Israëls has deployed them here mirrors the plainness of the scene. The smudged grey tones evoke a sense of enclosure, a hardworking family’s refuge. Look closely, and you can see that the graphite is applied in many different directions, a kind of visual shorthand. Israëls is suggesting rather than describing every last detail. In this, he reveals his commitment to capturing the emotional truth of working class life. Consider how different this drawing is from the polished surfaces of academic painting. Rather than a bravura performance, it’s more like a quick sketch, done from life, catching a fleeting moment of intimacy. In this way, Israëls elevates the everyday, suggesting that true beauty can be found even in humble circumstances, and by extension, in humble materials.