Kind voor een staande vrouw 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing of a child with a standing woman with charcoal on paper. What strikes me is the urgency and the pure need to capture a moment here. Look at the raw texture and the smudgy darkness of the charcoal. It's not about perfection; it's about the energy of the line, the pure physicality of the gesture. See the long, almost frantic lines that suggest the standing woman, they’re like a blur, just a hint of her presence. Then, there's the denser, darker mass that forms the child. The face is barely there, just a smudge, but it conveys so much. It makes me think of other artists who were all about capturing the fleeting moment like Degas or Toulouse-Lautrec. Israels reminds us that art is about feeling, about being in the moment, and about not being afraid to let the raw energy of life show through.