Vrouw met een hand achter haar hoofd 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing of a woman with a hand behind her head with graphite on paper. It is a very immediate drawing, a quick study of a figure, the strokes feel loose and unlabored. I can imagine Israels in a cafe, observing the world around him, trying to capture a sense of lightness, a fleeting moment of everyday life. Just like in painting, drawing becomes a way to inquire and think through process, to think with your hands. Israels’s drawings remind me of Degas’s, with their interest in the fleeting and informal, but there's an intimacy here, too, like a Morisot drawing. Each mark is a decision, but it is the build up of these decisions that makes the drawing so special. It is this layering that allows the artist to explore form and space, feeling and perception, and ultimately, what makes the work resonate. Ultimately, this is what the conversation of art is, what it has always been, across time.