Friday 14 July 2023

Jozef Israëls - part 2

 

Jozef Israëls 1881-85 by Maurits Verveer

Jozef Israëls, (1824 Groningen, Netherlands - 1911 The Hague), painter and etcher, often called the “Dutch Millet” (a reference to Jean-François Millet). Israëls was the leader of the Hague School of peasant genre painting, which flourished in the Netherlands between 1860 and 1900. He began his studies in Amsterdam and from 1845 to 1847 worked in Paris under the academic painters Horace Vernet and Paul Delaroche.

Israëls first tried to establish himself as a painter of Romantic portraits and conventional historical pictures but had achieved little success when in 1855 ill health compelled him to leave Amsterdam for the fishing village of Zandvoort, near Haarlem. That change of scenery revolutionised his art: he turned to realistic and compassionate portrayals of the Dutch peasantry and fisherfolk. In 1871 he moved to The Hague, and he often worked in nearby Scheveningen. 

Besides oils, Israëls worked in watercolours and was an etcher of the first rank. His later works in all media express a tragic sense of life and are generally treated in broad masses of light and shade. His painting style was influenced by Rembrandt’s later works, and, like Rembrandt, Israëls often painted the poor Jews of the Dutch ghettos. His son Isaac (1865–1934), also a painter, adopted an Impressionist technique and subject matter and had some influence on his father’s later work.


For more biographical information, and for earlier works, see part 1 also.

This is part 2 of an 8-part series on the works of Jozef Israëls:


1878 Alone in the World
oil on canvas 90 x 139 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

1878 Alone in the World
watercolour on paper 33 x 49.5 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

1878 We grow Old
oil on canvas 160 x 101 cm
Haags Gemeentemuseum, The Hague

c1879 Girl with Basket seated on the Shore
etching on laid paper 15.9 x 22.9 cm (plate)
Detroit Institute of Arts, MI

1879 Feeding the Pet Goat
oil on panel 50 x 33.6 cm

1879 Children on the Beach
etching on paper 15 x 23 cm

1879 Anxious Moments (after Jozef Israëls)
etching and drypoint on paper 45.7 x 55.6 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

1880 When One gets Old: By the Fire
oil on canvas 40 x 29.5 cm
Museum Abtei, Lisbon

1883 When One gets Old: By the Fire
oil on canvas 70 x 50.5 cm
Gemeentemuseum, The Hague

n.d. When One gets Old: By the Fire
print on wove paper 50 x 31 cm

1880-99 Melancholy
oil on canvas 57 x 45.5 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

1880-99 Old Man and Baby
oil on canvas 110 x 148 cm
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD

c1880 A Sea Urchin
oil on panel 25.4 x 19 cm
National Galleries of Scotland, UK

n.d. A Sea Urchin
 oil on panel 62.2 x 55.2 cm

c1880 Peeling Potatoes
etching on paper (size not given)
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

c1880 The Seamstress
watercolour on paper 41.4 x 30.4 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

c1880 Young Navigators
oil on panel 45.1 x 32.4 cm

1881 Sewing School at Katwijk
oil on canvas 111.4 x 144.7 cm

1882 Old Friends (Silent Conversation)
oil on canvas 132.4 x 175.4 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

1882 Peasant Family at Table
oil on canvas 71 x 105 cm
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

1882 The Smoker
engraving on tan wove paper 40.4 x 27.8 cm (plate)
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

c1882 Interior of a Peasant Hut
oil on canvas 60 x 72 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

1883 Old woman by the Hearth
etching on paper 41.3 x 29.4 cm

1885-95 Mother and Child on a Seashore
oil on panel 48.4 x 74 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

c1885-99 An Old Man writing by Candlelight
oil on canvas 65 x 54.6 cm
The National Gallery, London

c1885-1911 Cows in a Meadow by the Water
pencil and watercolour on paper
(from a sketchbook)
Rijksmueum, Amsterdam

c1885-1911 Landscape with a Group of Cows under a Tree
pencil and watercolour on paper
(from a sketchbook)
Rijksmueum, Amsterdam

1886 Tending the Fire
oil on board 30.5 x 25.4 cm

before 1887 Expectation
oil on canvas 181.6 x 137.2 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

1887 The Sand Barge
oil on canvas 62 x 90 cm

c1888 Son of the Ancient People
watercolour on paper 58 x 45.2 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

c1889 A Son of the Ancient Race
oil on canvas 111.4 x 85.7 cm
The Jewish Museum, New York

c1898 Son of the Chosen People
oil on canvas 70 x 53 cm

after1890 On the Dunes
 oil on panel 19.8 x 18 cm
Worcester Art Museum, UK

1890 The Joy of Motherhood
oil on. canvas 106 x 129 cm

c1890-95 Girl on a Dune
oil on panel 11 x 16.5 cm
The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology,
 Oxford, UK

c1890 Children at the Seashore
oil on canvas 54.3 x 82.7 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

c1890 Grace before the Meal
oil on canvas 104.1 x 141.3 cm

c1890 Mother and Child on a Seashore
oil on panel 48.4 x 74 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

c1890 The Mother
etching on paper (size not given)
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1891 Tomb of Mr. Carel Vosmaer in Territet
pencil and watercolour on paper 33.6 x 23.5 cm

before 1892 Mother and Child
oil on canvas 127.6 x 95.3 cm
Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA

1892 On Country Roads and Fields
oil on canvas 128 x 185 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

1893 Louis Jacques Veltman, Actor (1817-1907)
oil on canvas 81.7 x 61.4 cm
Rijksmuseumn, Amsterdam

1894 Alone in the World
photomechanical wood engraving on paper 12.6 x 19.8 cm
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC

1895 Bible Reading
oil on panel 31.9 x 17.5 cm

c1895 Refreshment
charcoal and black chalk, with stumping and traces of graphite, heightened with touches of white chalk, on cream wove paper 32.1 x 48.1 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

c1895 Seated Old Man
black pastel, with charcoal and stumping, on ivory wove paper 40.5 x 33.5 cm
Art Institute of Chicago, IL

1896 Meditation
oil on canvas 50.7 x x 461 cm
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Wednesday 12 July 2023

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