Vrouw met gesloten ogen 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing, Vrouw met gesloten ogen, with a stick of graphite on a sheet of paper. Look at the marks, the smudges, the sketchy erasures. I imagine him bent over the page, squinting in concentration, making swift marks to capture the essence of the woman he sees before him. There’s a tender quality to this drawing, a gentleness in the way Israels renders her closed eyes and relaxed pose. You can see that he is feeling with her. It's a drawing after all, not a painting, so he’s not building up layers of color and texture, but instead using line and shading to create depth and volume. There are lines that are barely there, and some that are quite dark and intense, but the overall effect is one of lightness and airiness. What do you think, is this a woman he knows and loves? Or just a figure that he sees fleetingly? Maybe she is just a model in his studio? The beauty of art is that it invites us to wonder, and to imagine possibilities beyond what we see.