DOI article:
Halton, Ernest G.: Josef Israëls: the leader of the modern Dutch school
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43448#0110
Josef Israels
his own. The tightness which is so apparent in his
earlier pictures gradually gave place to a freer
handling, until he finally acquired a remarkable
looseness of touch which is one of the most pro-
minent characteristics of the work of his maturity.
Here we find no trace of his early academic train-
ing, no suggestion of the conventional, but a phase
of an individual technique eminently suited to the
moods and aims of the artist. The searching
accuracy of drawing and brilliant execution of the
old Dutch painters, such as Vermeer and Peter de
Hoogh, did not appeal to him, and Rembrandt is
the only master who appears to have influenced
him. Like his great progenitor, Israels made a
special study of the treatment of light and shade
in their relation to colour, and in this respect he
had no rival amongst modern painters. Referring
to this important feature in Israels’art Max Rooses
has said: “He brought about a revolution in painting
by reforming the part played by light and colour;
these were no longer independent in their strength
and brilliancy, but mingled, dissolved, melted into
a whole, in which all is equal, all is adequate,
nothing dominating, nothing yielding.”
But perhaps the keynote of Israels’ success may
be found in the fact that in his pictures subject
and surroundings are always in harmony. To him
every theme should have its own peculiar setting ;
and thus he would place his melancholy figures in
a room lit by the dim flame of a candle, or the
tempered light from a window, and he would
clothe them in an atmosphere of grey and sombre
tones. And again, when he depicted children
sailing their toy-boat in the sea, the scene would be
bathed in sunlight and the colours would assume a
lighter and more joyous hue, to suggest the happi-
ness of childhood. Let us take as an example the
picture Honoured Old Age, illustrated on p. 98, with
the figure of the old woman warming her hands
over the fire. The failing light coming through
the unseen window, the deepening shadows, the
stillness of the figure, all suggest the evening of
life, in this case obviously a life of struggle and
privation.
In the adaptation of the various elements of his
composition one to the other, the blending of light
and shade, the harmonising of colours, the subtle
graduating of tones, and the avoidance of discordant
notes or striking passages likely to interfere with
the general unity of the whole, Israels has worthily
upheld the finest traditions of his national art.
Here we have the true explanation of his affinity
to the seventeenth-century Dutchmen. In the
selection of his principal subjects he showed little
in common with them—for they seldom concerned
themselves with sorrow and mourning, though the
“THE CROFTER’S PATCI-l” FROM THE WATER-COLOUR BY JOSEF ISRAELS
96
his own. The tightness which is so apparent in his
earlier pictures gradually gave place to a freer
handling, until he finally acquired a remarkable
looseness of touch which is one of the most pro-
minent characteristics of the work of his maturity.
Here we find no trace of his early academic train-
ing, no suggestion of the conventional, but a phase
of an individual technique eminently suited to the
moods and aims of the artist. The searching
accuracy of drawing and brilliant execution of the
old Dutch painters, such as Vermeer and Peter de
Hoogh, did not appeal to him, and Rembrandt is
the only master who appears to have influenced
him. Like his great progenitor, Israels made a
special study of the treatment of light and shade
in their relation to colour, and in this respect he
had no rival amongst modern painters. Referring
to this important feature in Israels’art Max Rooses
has said: “He brought about a revolution in painting
by reforming the part played by light and colour;
these were no longer independent in their strength
and brilliancy, but mingled, dissolved, melted into
a whole, in which all is equal, all is adequate,
nothing dominating, nothing yielding.”
But perhaps the keynote of Israels’ success may
be found in the fact that in his pictures subject
and surroundings are always in harmony. To him
every theme should have its own peculiar setting ;
and thus he would place his melancholy figures in
a room lit by the dim flame of a candle, or the
tempered light from a window, and he would
clothe them in an atmosphere of grey and sombre
tones. And again, when he depicted children
sailing their toy-boat in the sea, the scene would be
bathed in sunlight and the colours would assume a
lighter and more joyous hue, to suggest the happi-
ness of childhood. Let us take as an example the
picture Honoured Old Age, illustrated on p. 98, with
the figure of the old woman warming her hands
over the fire. The failing light coming through
the unseen window, the deepening shadows, the
stillness of the figure, all suggest the evening of
life, in this case obviously a life of struggle and
privation.
In the adaptation of the various elements of his
composition one to the other, the blending of light
and shade, the harmonising of colours, the subtle
graduating of tones, and the avoidance of discordant
notes or striking passages likely to interfere with
the general unity of the whole, Israels has worthily
upheld the finest traditions of his national art.
Here we have the true explanation of his affinity
to the seventeenth-century Dutchmen. In the
selection of his principal subjects he showed little
in common with them—for they seldom concerned
themselves with sorrow and mourning, though the
“THE CROFTER’S PATCI-l” FROM THE WATER-COLOUR BY JOSEF ISRAELS
96