1882
Israëls was born on January 27, 1824 in Groningen, Netherlands, 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.
Born in Groningen, Holland, Israels was both ardently Duth and genuinely Jewish. In his childhood he learned Hebrew and Jewish wisdom and lore, and throughout his long life, his studio w'as always closed on the Sabbath.
As a child, Israels attended art classes after school. When he was sixteen, he went to Amsterdam to study with Jan Adam Kruseman, a celebrated painterof historical pictures, and in 1841 he was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts.
He went to Paris in 1845, where he studied with Paul Delaroche and Horace Vernet. Back in Holland, he lived in Amsterdam and painted historical and biblical subjects. In 1855, however, after a severe illness, he visited the seashore to recuperate. In the fishing village of, Zandvoort, Israels lived among the villagers and painted them at their everyday activities. The seashore changed his palette. His colors became light and brighter. The strong line of his earlier work was softened by the light. He was an impressionist a quarter of a century before the first impressionist exhibition in Paris.
Because of this break with contemporary style and subject matter, he found himself the leader of the Hague school, artists who painted life and landscape. He himself had moved to The Hague in 1871. His painting The Shipwrecked Mariner was exhibited in London and Paris; this marked the beginning of his popularity outside Holland, which quickly reached the United States. Art lovers and collectors were attracted by his sympathy for his subjects and his pictures which were felt to have “soul.”
When Israels was seventy-four, he went on a journey to Spain, Morocco, and Italy. Visiting the Jewish section of Tangier, he entered a dark room where a man asked him, in Hebrew, what he wanted. In Hebrew, Israels greeted the man, and said he was a Jew from Holland. The man had never heard of Holland but he invited Israels to enter the room There the artist found an old scribe, writing on parchment. When Israels returned to Holland, he made a painting of this scene called Torah Scribe.
In 1910, Israels’s dealer, Goupil (Boussod, Valadon & Cie), held a retrospective exhibition to celebrate their fifty-year association. They had handled hundreds of his works, and were familiar with every aspect of his development.
When he died the following year, all Holland mourned. He was buried in the old Jewish cemetery in Scheveningen. The queen sent a representative to his funeral; streets and squares were named after him; and Groningen, his native city, erected a monument in his memory, depicting the fishermen that he had loved to paint.
Israels’s proficient work, whether oils, watercolors, or etchings, included many portraits. He made several sketches of the sitter and then painted the portrait from the sketches. Many of his paintings depicted Jewish subjects. One of the best known, "Son of the Ancient People", is painted in drab colors and shows a sad Jewish man sitting in front of his drab store. Israels’s palette, though, was both rich and subtle. He worked with tones, gradations, and light that shimmers and vibrates. Although he himself always stressed the formal basis of his work — structure, the composition, and line — it is the artist’s warmth, empathy, and humanism that is the hallmark of his work.
The Shipwrecked Mariner
Sailing the boat at sea Sun
Peasant Family at Table
1882Israëls 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.
Isaac Israels (1865-1934), was also a distinguished painter. Influenced by the impres¬sionists, many of his works reflect contemporary social life.
