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| 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:
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| 1850 Study for The Musing-Meditations oil on panel 20.5 x 33 cm |
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| 1850 The Musing-Meditations oil on canvas 137 x 205 cm Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands |
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| c1850 The Musing-Meditations lithograph on wove paper 34 x 51.4 cm |
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| 1850 The Servant oil on panel 26 x 19 cm |
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| 1850-88 The Little Seamstress oil on canvas 75.7 x 61.2 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| 1850s In the Kitchen oil on cardboard 29.5 x 37 cm |
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| 1854 Passing Mother’s Grave oil on canvas 91.5 x 65 cm The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK |
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| 1880 Passing Mother’s Grave etching on paper 53 x 39.1 cm The British Museum, London |
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| c1855 Heer Helweg, the Jeweller of Amsterdam oil on canvas 75.6 x 58.2 cm |
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| 1857 Sientje Nijkerk-Servaas at the age of 90 oil on canvas 62.4 x 46.6 cm Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| 1857-60 Ship in Distress oil on panel 27.9 x 38.6 cm |
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| 1858 After the Storm oil on canvas 113 x 148 cm |
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| 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 |
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| 1860-80 Peasant Children oil on millboard 52.3 x 48.5 cm Museums Sheffield, UK |
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| c1861 Fishermen carrying a Drowned Man oil on canvas 129 x 244 cm The National Gallery, London |
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| 1862 The Day before Parting oil on canvas 102.5 x 126 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1862 The Day before Parting watercolour on paper 30.6 x 38.5 cm |
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| 1863-83 Portrait of a Baby with Hat reproduction print 25 x 19 cm |
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| 1864 Next to the Bed watercolour on paper 22.5 x 28.5 cm |
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| 1864 The Seaweed Gatherers' Return watercolour and gouache on paper 19 x 40.5 cm |
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| c1867 The Cottage Madonna oil on canvas 134.6 x 99.7 cm Detroit Institute of Arts, MI |
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| c1868 The Sleepers oil on canvas 84.8 x 115.6 cm Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum, UK |
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| c1869 Squatting Woman in a Cemetery in Pontresina pencil and watercolour on paper (from a sketchbook) Rijksmueum, Amsterdam |
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| c1869 Forest in Pontresina pencil and watercolour on paper (from sketchbook) Rijksmueum, Amsterdam |
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| 1869 Quarry at Pontresina pencil and watercolour on paper 16.7 x 25.5 cm Rijksmueum, Amsterdam |
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| c1870-75 Grief oil on canvas 46 x 58 cm Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, UK |
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| c1870-85 The Happy Family oil on canvas 41.6 x 57.8 cm Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, UK |
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| 1871 The Errand oil on canvas 48.7 x 73.8 cm Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums, UK |
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| c1871 Convalescent Mother and a Child oil on panel 27.9 x 36.5 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1872 Children of the Sea oil on canvas 49 x 91 cm Rijksmuesum, Amsterdam |
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| 1872 Children of the Sea detail |
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| 1872 The Last Breath oil on canvas 111.8 x 176.5 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1872 The Last Breath detail |
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| 1873 Girl with a Spade etching on paper (dimensions not given) Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1873 Homewards etching on paper 13.3 x 9.5 cm (plate) Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1873 Two Figures in an Interior etching on paper 10 x 15.1 cm |
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| 1873 Two Figures in an Interior etching on paper 10 x 15 cm |
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| 1873 Woman waiting with a Child in her Arms etching on paper 15 x 10 cm |
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| 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 |
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| c1875 The Pancakes oil on canvas 65 x 55.4 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| c1876 The Frugal Meal oil on canvas 88.9 x 138.7 cm Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, UK |
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| 1876 The Card Players oil on canvas 136 x 187 cm |
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| c1875-80 A Ray of Sunshine oil on canvas, laid down on masonite 113 x 88.6 cm |
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| 1875-89 Woman with Bag over her Shoulder print 40 x 29 cm |
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| 1877 In the Artist's Studio oil on panel 79.5 x 62 cm |
