Studieblad met Afrikaanse vrouwen, mogelijk danseressen 1875 - 1934

These figures sketched by Isaac Israels, possibly dancers, are all urgent charcoal marks. I can feel the artist quickly trying to capture the movement of the bodies as they shift and change. There’s a real sense of someone grabbing a moment. I imagine Israels hunched over his sketchbook, urgently trying to record what he sees, his hand barely keeping up with the scene in front of him. He is looking, but not staring. I love how the marks are so raw and immediate. Each line seems to embody a single, fleeting gesture—a curve of a shoulder, the tilt of a head. It reminds me of Degas’s drawings of dancers, where the process of observation and recording is just as important as the final image. There's a sense of freedom in these sketches, an openness to the possibilities of the medium. You can see the artist thinking through the charcoal, as he brings the dancers into being, a little smudged, a little ethereal.