Figuren in badkleding op het strand 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels quickly captured these figures in bathing suits on the beach with graphite on paper. It’s an open notebook, so we can see the process right there. Looking at these sketches, I feel like Israels was one of those artists who could just *see* things. He could distill the essence of a figure with a few lines. You know, the way a dancer or a basketball player just *knows* where to move? Israels just knew where the lines needed to go to capture the feeling of bodies on a beach. I wonder what he was thinking as he worked? Was he trying to capture the light, the way Degas did with his ballet dancers? Or was he more interested in the people themselves, like Toulouse-Lautrec? Whatever it was, he was part of a conversation, one that's been going on for centuries, about how we see and represent the world. And how our looking at it, changes it again.