Staande vrouw 1834 - 1911

Curator: Jozef Israëls, that melancholy magician of light, captured this Standing Woman on paper somewhere between 1834 and 1911 using pencil. A ghost of a figure really, lingering here in the Rijksmuseum. Editor: Ghostly is right. It’s barely there. Like a half-formed memory, a figure sketched only in suggestion, more about capturing a feeling than a likeness, I suppose. Is it grief? She’s draped in it. Curator: Israëls had a way of tapping into those raw, human emotions. He comes from a generation grappling with the big, awkward questions of industrialisation, and how ordinary people were affected. What kind of stories did museums want to preserve and display? Editor: Precisely, the politicised question. Look how this drawing performs rather than asserts. You sense a vulnerability in the work, this fragile woman reduced to mere lines, suggesting a world where identities were precarious. I suppose the drawing on paper further captures fragility. Curator: I imagine Israëls hunched over his sketchpad, in his quiet corner of his studio. Trying to breathe some life into her. Note the lines though, there's an exquisite lightness. And, this form is allusive of realism with the sketch’s emphasis on shape. Editor: I see how he gives you just enough to grasp a story, or rather, a thousand potential stories all whispering at once. Realism here suggests at what isn’t immediately apparent in reality: life’s precariousness. Curator: What’s interesting too is the Rijksmuseum context; within this massive institution of art and history. Does seeing her here, so modestly rendered, somehow amplify the story of everyday struggles, the things museums often overlook? Editor: Yes. A figure like this standing guard somehow over history itself. Curator: Indeed. An unfinished statement that we complete simply by observing, simply by witnessing. Editor: Beautifully said. Now, on to the next...