Gordijn, mogelijk een theaterdoek 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this pencil drawing of a curtain, possibly for a theatre, sometime between 1865 and 1934. It evokes the world of spectacle and performance, a world with a complex relationship to the bourgeois society of the Netherlands at that time. Consider the function of a curtain like this: it mediates between the audience and the stage, concealing and revealing, creating anticipation and suspense. The theatre itself, as an institution, occupied a similarly ambiguous place in Dutch society. On the one hand, it was a source of entertainment and cultural enrichment. On the other, it was viewed with suspicion by some as a site of moral corruption and social disruption. Israels' drawing, with its suggestive lines and atmospheric shading, captures something of this ambivalence. What's on the other side? To understand Israels' work more fully, we can delve into the archives of Dutch theatre history, exploring playbills, reviews, and other documents. Only then can we appreciate its full significance as a product of its time and place.