International studio (45.1912)

Josef Israels

JOSEF ISRAELS: THE LEADER OF
THE MODERN DUTCH SCHOOL.
The death of Josef Israels at the great age of
eighty-seven, which took place on August 12th
last at The Hague, removed the last and perhaps the
most prominent of the great painters whose names
will always be associated with the Modern Dutch
School. It is true that wonderful magician of the
brush, Matthew Maris, is still with us, but, except by
accident of birth, he can hardly be said to belong
to the small group of which his brother James,
Mauve, Bosboom, and Israels were the most dis-
tinguished members; nor can his influence be
readily traced in the work of his contemporaries in
Holland. Undoubtedly it is mainly to the four
artists just mentioned that we owe the re-
markable revival which has taken place in Dutch
painting and has restored Holland once more to
her former eminent position in the world of art.
The part which Israels played
in this revival was an important
one, and in order better to under-
stand his art it is desirable to
recall the circumstances which
surrounded this regeneration.
Although to a large extent the
outcome of it, the revival of the
Dutch School of Painting was
brought about without any of the
stirring elements which accom-
panied the Romantic Movement
in France. During the eighteenth
and the first half of the nine-
teenth centuries painting in Hol-
land had been on the decline.
Like that of France just previous
to 1850, it was cold and unin-
spired, and void of all -the rich
vitality which characterised the
work of the great seventeenth-
century Dutchmen. Stirred by
the example of their brother
artists in France the younger
painters of Holland strove to
raise their art to a higher level.
They awoke, as it were, to the
sense of beauty in nature, and
with this awakening came a
desire to render with truth and
simplicity the peculiar charac-
teristics of the scenes and life of
their country. And the fact that
they thus sought inspiration in
XLV. No. 178.—December 1911.

their immediate surroundings accounts in a large
measure for their limited range of subjects.
The true nature of this awakening is well
exemplified in the change which it wrought in the
work of Israels. His early studies had been
carried on under the direction of Jan Kruseman in
Amsterdam, a fashionable artist possessing very
little real ability. Then for two years he was in
Paris, where he entered the atelier of Picot, the
historical painter, a pupil of David. From there
he went to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he
came under the influence of Delaroche, and finally
he returned to Holland. The result of this training
may be seen in his early works, mostly of an
historical or dramatic character, which reveal very
little artistic merit, and display most of the failings
which characterised the work then being produced
in his country. It is indeed difficult to trace in
these early pictures any signs of those splendid quali-
ties which we find in the best works of his maturity.


“THE YOUNG wife” FROM THE OIL PAINTING BY JOSEF ISRAELS
(By permission of Messrs. Wallis and Son)

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