Twee studies van een mannenhoofd met hoofddeksel 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made these two studies of a man's head with a hat, probably in a sketchbook. Look at how the lines scratch across the page, feeling out the form. There's a real sense of searching here, like Israels is thinking through the pencil, letting the process guide him. The lines are so immediate, so raw. You can almost feel the pressure of the pencil on the paper, the quick flicks and pauses as he tries to capture something fleeting, something real. See how the hatching around the jaw suggests form without fully defining it? It's like he's more interested in the feeling of the face than a perfect likeness. This reminds me of sketches made by Van Gogh, both artists used the medium of drawing to capture the intensity of the real. These studies are about so much more than just drawing a face, they're about the act of seeing, the act of trying to understand another person. And, of course, art is always more about the questions than the answers, right?