Bomen c. 1885 - 1902

"Bomen," or "Trees," is a pencil drawing by Jozef Israëls, a Dutch artist who lived from 1824 to 1911. Israëls, deeply influenced by the social realities of his time, often depicted scenes of poverty and the working class. Though this drawing is not one of them, we can see the sensitivity to the everyday and the ordinary in his rendering of the trees. Israëls was known for his ability to capture the emotional essence of his subjects, so I wonder what feelings these trees evoked in him. His Jewish identity was central to his understanding of humanity, and it informed his artistic perspective, particularly in the way he approached themes of empathy and shared human experience.