Lezend meisje aan een tafel 1834 - 1911

Jozef Israëls made this pencil drawing of a reading girl at a table sometime in the mid-19th century. It’s a study, not a finished work, and the sketch-like quality invites us to think about the relationship between artistic training and the world of art institutions. Israëls lived at a time when there were fierce debates about what art should look like, and whom it should represent. Across Europe, artists were moving away from traditional depictions of historical or mythological subjects in favour of scenes from everyday life, and they showed ordinary working people. Israëls was associated with the Hague School, a group of Dutch realist painters who sought to represent the lives of ordinary people. To understand the social context of this work better, it might be useful to look at the artist’s letters, and to investigate exhibition catalogues from the period. The meaning of art is always contingent on its social and institutional context.