Zittende vrouw 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing, 'Zittende Vrouw,' with what looks like charcoal, creating an image that feels less about the woman herself and more about the act of seeing. The paper is almost entirely blank, except for a flurry of marks in the top left corner that describes the woman. But the marks don't fully describe anything; they are more like a code or a suggestion, leaving much to the imagination. The artist only gives us the bare bones of her figure, a kind of shorthand. There is a beautiful, scribbled-in darkness around the head of the sitter, which makes me think about how Edgar Degas used charcoal, and his sketches of dancers. In both artists' work, there is a sense of the fleeting and unfinished, as though the work is about capturing something in motion, and this quality of incompleteness is what makes the piece so compelling.