Twee vrouwen aan tafel 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this sketch of two women at a table with graphite on paper. Look how the marks seem to build up the image right before our eyes. The lines are searching, scribbling, finding the form, and then solidifying it, but just a little. It’s a kind of beautiful dance between seeing and not seeing. I love the sketchiness of it all. It feels so immediate and in process. The artist isn’t trying to hide anything – the corrections, the uncertainty, it’s all right there on the surface. It gives the whole drawing a vibrancy, like it’s still alive. It's like you are watching the artwork come into being. Notice, for example, how Israels uses repeated strokes to describe the curve of the woman’s back on the left, and the shadow it casts. It’s these little moments that really sing. Israels seems related to artists like Degas, who also focused on immediacy and capturing the ephemerality of modern life. Ultimately, art is an ongoing conversation, an exchange of ideas across time, with room for multiple interpretations.