Drie staande figuren 1921 - 1922

Curator: Isaac Israels sketched these 'Drie staande figuren,' or Three Standing Figures, sometime between 1921 and 1922. It's a pencil drawing now residing here at the Rijksmuseum. What springs to mind when you see it? Editor: There’s a fragile beauty in the incompleteness of it all. Like a whispered secret caught mid-sentence. A melancholy mood hangs over them, though the strokes themselves are brisk. Curator: Whispered secrets… I like that. These lines, so simple and yet evocative. One could see this as almost a preliminary exercise. An attempt to grasp an initial sense of character—a visual note. We can look at Israels’ work and ask: what did he make and with what materials? In what context? It’s pencil on paper. Accessible. Democratic. Editor: Absolutely. Israels was known for capturing the energy of modern life, particularly the lives of women. Are these studies of models, perhaps? Pencil sketches allows for a certain fluidity, doesn't it? There is an intimacy you don't get with more 'finished' works. Curator: The immediacy is palpable. Pencil, a readily available material, becomes a tool for documenting fleeting observations. I agree, they could be models; more likely, women observed going about their day. Note how Israels plays with light and shadow, even within the barest lines. There's movement, a delicate kind of vitality despite the work's spare nature. Editor: I’m drawn to think about the mass production of pencils at the time, the shift in how accessible drawing materials became. These figures are products of industrial processes even if the lines portray individual experience. Are the materials as much subjects as these imagined figures? Curator: A great point, yes, perhaps. Mass production shapes individual expression here. The ephemeral nature of a sketch mirrors the fleeting encounters he immortalized on paper. It begs the question—were these images ever intended to leave the page? The artist is immortalizing not the people perhaps as much as their presence. Editor: An intimate dance between material and subject then. Thank you.