Zittende man en een zittend meisje 1875 - 1934

Isaac Israels made this study of a seated man and girl at an unknown date with graphite on paper. Looking at the scratchy marks here, I imagine the artist quickly capturing the fleeting essence of the figures before they moved. I can almost feel the weight of the graphite in the artist’s hand, see the pressure they applied to the page to create those darker, more assertive lines. I wonder what Israels was thinking as he rendered these forms. Was he trying to understand their relationship, their posture, or simply experimenting with line and form? You know, there’s something so intimate about sketches like these. They feel raw, immediate, like a direct line to the artist’s thought process. Each stroke is like a whisper, revealing not just what he saw, but how he saw it. It reminds me that as artists, we are all in constant dialogue, borrowing, riffing, and responding to each other across time.