Abklatsch van de krijttekening op blad 13 recto c. 1886 - 1934

This drawing was made by Isaac Israels, using chalk. It's a print, but the soft grays make me think about touch, pressure, and the way one image can give birth to another. Looking at this, I imagine Israels in his studio, maybe experimenting with ways to capture the essence of a sketch, playing around with ways to replicate the original while also creating something new in the process. I can see him pressing the chalk drawing onto another surface, sort of like a mirror image, but not quite. The texture here is everything. You can almost feel the grain of the paper, the way the chalk grabs and releases. It’s a whisper of an image, a ghost of the original, and it reminds me that every mark, every gesture, carries a trace of the artist’s hand and their intention, even in reproduction. It points to a continuum of mark-making where ideas bounce back and forth between artists. It invites us to embrace the unpredictable nature of the creative process.