Jozef Israëls - part 1

1881 Self Portrait
oil on canvas 34.5 x 29.7 cm
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums, UK

Jozef Israëls (1824 – 1911) was a Dutch painter. He was a leading member of the group of landscape painters referred to as the Hague School and, during his lifetime, "the most respected Dutch artist of the second half of the nineteenth century."

He was born in Groningen, of Jewish parents. His father, Hartog Abraham Israëls, intended for him to be a businessman, and it was only after a determined struggle that he was allowed to embark on an artistic career. He studied initially from 1835 to 1842 at the Minerva Academy in his home town Groningen.

He continued his studies subsequently in Amsterdam, studying at the Royal Academy for Fine Arts in Amsterdam. He was a pupil of Jan Kruseman and attended the drawing class at the academy. From September 1845 until May 1847 he was in Paris, working in the history painter Picot’s studio and taking classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He returned to Amsterdam in September 1845 where he resumed his studies at the Academy until May 1847. Israëls remained in Amsterdam until 1870, when he moved to The Hague and became a leading member of the Hague School of landscape painters.

He married Aleida Schaap and the couple had two children, a daughter Mathilde Anna Israëls and a son, Isaac Lazarus Israëls, born Amsterdam 3 February 1865, who also became a fine art painter.

Israëls has often been compared to Jean-François Millet. As artists, even more than as painters in the strict sense of the word, they both, in fact, saw in the life of the poor and humble a motive for expressing with peculiar intensity their wide human sympathy; but Millet was the poet of placid rural life, while in almost all Israëls' pictures there is some piercing note of woe. Edmond Duranty said of them that they were painted with gloom and suffering.

He began with historical and dramatic subjects in the romantic style of the day. By chance, after an illness, he went to recuperate his strength at the fishing-town of Zandvoort near Haarlem, and there he was struck by the daily tragedy of life. Thenceforth he was possessed by a new vein of artistic expression, sincerely realistic, full of emotion and pity.

In 1862, he achieved great success in London with his Shipwrecked, purchased by Mr Young, and The Cradle, two pictures that the Athenaeum magazine described as the most touching pictures of the exhibition.

This is part 1 of an 8-part series on the works of Jozef Israëls:

1850  Study for The Musing-Meditations 
oil on panel 20.5 x 33 cm

1850 The Musing-Meditations
oil on canvas 137 x 205 cm
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

c1850 The Musing-Meditations
lithograph on wove paper 34 x 51.4 cm

1850 The Servant
oil on panel 26 x 19 cm

1850-88 The Little Seamstress
oil on canvas 75.7 x 61.2 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

1850s In the Kitchen
oil on cardboard 29.5 x 37 cm

1854 Passing Mother’s Grave
oil on canvas 91.5 x 65 cm
The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK

1880 Passing Mother’s Grave
etching on paper 53 x 39.1 cm
The British Museum, London

c1855 Heer Helweg, the Jeweller of Amsterdam
oil on canvas 75.6 x 58.2 cm

1857 Sientje Nijkerk-Servaas at the age of 90
oil on canvas 62.4 x 46.6 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

1857-60 Ship in Distress
oil on panel 27.9 x 38.6 cm

1858 After the Storm
oil on canvas 113 x 148 cm

c1858-65 Ida, the Fisherman's Daughter
watercolour and gouache on cream wove paper
41.4 x 28.4 cm
Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA
© President and Fellows of Harvard College

1860-80 Peasant Children
oil on millboard 52.3 x 48.5 cm
Museums Sheffield, UK

c1861 Fishermen carrying a Drowned Man
 oil on canvas 129 x 244 cm
The National Gallery, London

1862 The Day before Parting
oil on canvas 102.5 x 126 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

1862 The Day before Parting
watercolour on paper 30.6 x 38.5 cm

1863-83 Portrait of a Baby with Hat
reproduction print 25 x 19 cm

1864 Next to the Bed
watercolour on paper  22.5 x 28.5 cm

1864 The Seaweed Gatherers' Return
watercolour and gouache on paper 19 x 40.5 cm

c1867 The Cottage Madonna
oil on canvas 134.6 x 99.7 cm
Detroit Institute of Arts, MI

c1868 The Sleepers
oil on canvas 84.8 x 115.6 cm
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum, UK

c1869 Squatting Woman in a Cemetery in Pontresina
pencil and watercolour on paper
(from a sketchbook)
Rijksmueum, Amsterdam

c1869 Forest in Pontresina
pencil and watercolour on paper
(from sketchbook)
Rijksmueum, Amsterdam

1869 Quarry at Pontresina
pencil and watercolour on paper 16.7 x 25.5 cm
Rijksmueum, Amsterdam

c1870-75 Grief
oil on canvas 46 x 58 cm
Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, UK

c1870-85 The Happy Family
oil on canvas 41.6 x 57.8 cm
Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, UK

1871 The Errand
oil on canvas 48.7 x 73.8 cm
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums, UK

c1871 Convalescent Mother and a Child
oil on panel 27.9 x 36.5 cm
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA

1872 Children of the Sea
oil on canvas 49 x 91 cm
Rijksmuesum, Amsterdam

1872 Children of the Sea detail

1872 The Last Breath
oil on canvas 111.8 x 176.5 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

1872 The Last Breath detail

1873 Girl with a Spade
etching on paper
(dimensions not given)
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1873 Homewards
etching on paper 13.3 x 9.5 cm (plate)
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

1873 Two Figures in an Interior
etching on paper 10 x 15.1 cm

1873 Two Figures in an Interior
etching on paper 10 x 15 cm

1873 Woman waiting with a Child in her Arms
etching on paper 15 x 10 cm

1875 Portrait of Mrs. Israëls
etching and drypoint printed in black ink on laid paper
12.1 x 7.9 cm (plate)
Detroit Institute of Arts, MI

c1875 The Pancakes
oil on canvas 65 x 55.4 cm
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

c1876 The Frugal Meal
oil on canvas 88.9 x 138.7 cm
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, UK

1876 The Card Players
oil on canvas 136 x 187 cm

c1875-80 A Ray of Sunshine
oil on canvas, laid down on masonite 113 x 88.6 cm

1875-89 Woman with Bag over her Shoulder
print 40 x 29 cm

1877 In the Artist's Studio
oil on panel 79.5 x 62 cm