Schaakspelende mannen 1875 - 1934

Curator: I'm immediately struck by the casualness, the unfinished quality of this piece. It's so immediate, as if capturing a fleeting moment. Editor: Precisely! This is Isaac Israels’ “Schaakspelende Mannen,” or "Men Playing Chess," a mixed-media piece, including both watercolor and painting, created sometime between 1875 and 1934. It is now held at the Rijksmuseum. Curator: Chess, as a symbolic game, often represents intellectual combat, strategy, even social hierarchies. But here, Israels doesn’t seem interested in that so much as capturing an everyday scene. Editor: You are right, and how the very choice of materials emphasizes this effect of a quickly observed, and loosely defined reality. Consider the way the watery pigments both obscure and suggest the details of their faces. Curator: It feels modern in that way, almost as though we’re intruding on a private moment. This feels far from any tradition, academic study, in fact more akin to a sketch for an illustration. Editor: Yes, Israels was interested in depicting contemporary life, in its raw and unvarnished state. The framing makes you almost feel as though you're a bystander, just catching sight of the game unfolding, and how this is not a formal event or grand contest, rather simply an every day experience. Curator: I wonder how the accessibility of watercolor—its portability, its speed—influenced not only Israels’ style, but his subject matter too. These everyday moments now documented more frequently in his art are rendered more approachable by such quick impressionistic methods, bringing us ever closer to an intimate glance. Editor: An important consideration in itself as it questions not only who creates art but for whom is it made for? This piece encourages viewers to discover beauty and interest within their daily life. Israels gives us art which resonates through familiar symbols of common pastimes which is deeply entrenched in cultural memory. Curator: Thinking about it, isn't chess a fascinating motif to reappear consistently across artistic eras as a signifier of wealth, leisure and erudition? What's fascinating to me in this work is how utterly it lacks that pretense. It normalizes it to the most fundamental exchange; just a game among people in time. Editor: Absolutely. And that is perhaps where the long lasting appeal of Israels and of “Schaakspelende Mannen” really lies, as it uses a familiar, almost traditional tableau to say something utterly radical about daily lived experience.