Brug over de Herengracht te Amsterdam, ter hoogte van de Gasthuismolensteeg c. 1886 - 1934

Isaac Israels drew this sketch of a bridge over the Herengracht in Amsterdam with graphite or charcoal, and you can see the process so clearly! The beauty of a sketch is that it captures the first, unedited thought. The paper is allowed to breathe through the image, as if it is an urban fog. Israels's mark making is very present, there is no trompe l'oeil here. It's as if he starts and stops and then starts again. A confident line meets an anxious scribble. But the bridge is built, and the image holds. See how he uses a very soft, smudgy mark to build the dark shape of the bridge, and then he picks up his pencil to put in some details, almost like little jewels. Israels reminds me a bit of Manet, who also captured modern urban life in a very direct way, not to mention Whistler, with his tonalist studies of the Thames. Art is about capturing something fleeting, about making something out of nothing, and this sketch does just that.