Twee staande vrouwen 1875 - 1934

Curator: Look at this fantastic, fleeting sketch! "Twee staande vrouwen," or "Two Standing Women," rendered by Isaac Israels sometime between 1875 and 1934. Just pencil on paper, but oh, so much captured. Editor: My first thought? Elusive. They're there, but almost not. Like memories half-formed. What gets to me is how the looseness of the line evokes movement; are they about to turn and rush off? Curator: Precisely! Israels was, after all, a keen observer of modern life. What interests me here is this very informal genre painting – this casual intimacy. Note how the work belongs to the holdings of the Rijksmuseum. Although this work may come across as a personal sketchbook page, it testifies how society’s most forward looking cultural institutions value preliminary drawings. Editor: I like that…a public glimpse into a private moment. And their attire, that coat and hat! I can almost smell the city air. But does this impressionistic blurring risk reinforcing societal blind spots; the obscuring of individual identities into archetypes? Curator: Maybe…or maybe it's the democratizing effect of modern life on portraiture! Gone are the stiff poses and overt status symbols. Israels reduces them to pure presence. A few lines, a gesture, and we imagine the rest. The power isn’t in the specifics but in that raw, immediate feeling. Editor: Yes, it speaks to something fundamentally human – our transient connections with others. One has the feeling that, with a flick of his wrist, Israels wants to stress that all faces can become one within the public space. The figures merge and intertwine, sharing the same plane on the surface. Curator: It leaves one wondering who they were, doesn’t it? This drawing seems like such an incomplete yet utterly beautiful thought… Editor: A reminder that art is as much about what it omits as what it includes.