Rijtuigen op straat 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this drawing of carriages on a street with charcoal; it's a flurry of quick observations, a real sense of movement and energy. Look at how the charcoal is applied—smudged, scribbled, and layered, building up a rich, almost chaotic surface. There's a physicality to the medium here, charcoal is dry and powdery, and Israels really uses that to his advantage. The drawing feels immediate, like he’s trying to capture a fleeting moment. See the way he renders the trees on the left, a dense mass of tangled lines; it's almost like a shorthand for foliage, but it conveys so much more than just the visual appearance of leaves. It's the feeling of being surrounded by them, the texture, the density. Israels captures the raw energy of city life, a quality also found in the work of Édouard Manet, who, like Israels, embraced the messy, unfinished aspects of modern life in his art. It reminds us that art isn't just about perfect representation, it's about feeling, capturing, and translating the world around us in all its messy, beautiful complexity.