Figuurstudies 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made these figure studies with pencil, rapidly drawn on paper. I can almost feel the energy of his hand moving across the page, capturing fleeting impressions of figures in motion. It looks like he was trying to catch something - just like when you see something out of the corner of your eye, and you try and look, but it's gone. I bet he was trying to capture these figures with just a few strokes, like shorthand for the human form. There’s something so immediate and intimate about sketches, isn't there? You get a sense of the artist thinking, seeing, and feeling in real time. Think of the way artists like Degas or Toulouse-Lautrec also worked, quickly capturing scenes of modern life. Artists are always in conversation with one another across time, riffing on each other's ideas and pushing the boundaries of what painting can be. The magic of these pieces lies in their ambiguity, inviting us to bring our own experiences and interpretations to the work.