Abklatsch van de krijttekening op blad 18 verso 1887 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this chalk drawing on paper, we don't know exactly when. What we see is a transfer, or ‘Abklatsch,’ of a drawing. The soft, grainy texture we see is actually a secondary effect. It's not the original, but an echo. Israels was a master of capturing fleeting moments, and that comes through even in this ghostly image. The very process speaks to the sketch's status, a casual record rather than a finished work. It makes you wonder about the drawings that Israels made, and then rejected – the labor that was never quite brought to fruition. The transfer technique also suggests a kind of duplication, a proto-mechanical reproduction. Even in this intimate medium, we can glimpse the coming age of mass production. It all goes to show that there's much to discover even in the most unassuming of materials.