Duinweg met kar 1834 - 1911

Jozef Israëls made this pencil drawing, called 'Duinweg met kar', in the Netherlands at an unknown date. It is held in the Rijksmuseum. At the time, the Hague School artists like Israëls were turning away from Romanticism’s grand narratives, instead finding beauty in the mundane. His subdued palette and focus on rural life reflect a broader cultural interest in the lives of ordinary people, particularly those living outside the major urban centers. What might seem at first glance like a simple landscape becomes, on closer inspection, a commentary on the social and economic realities of the time. The solitary figures with their cart, dwarfed by the dunes, might evoke the hardships of rural existence. This image and others like it were responses to a rapidly industrializing world. Understanding this drawing requires looking into the social and economic conditions of the Netherlands in the 19th century. We might examine the role of Dutch art institutions, like the Rijksmuseum itself, in shaping artistic taste and promoting certain narratives about national identity.