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Jozef
Israëls (1824 – 1911) (Netherlands)
“The
Old Couple”
Original
Etching published 1880
Image
size 3 ¾” x 5 5/8” (95mm x 145mm)
Overall
framed size 11 5/8” x 15 ¼” (296mm x 386mm)
IMAGE IMAGE
Jozef Israëls was a painter and etcher, born
into a Jewish family living in Groningen, The Netherlands in 1824, and became
the best-known nineteenth-century Dutch painter of scenes of peasant life.
Although his father wanted him to be a businessman, he was eventually allowed
to study art and trained at the Minerva Academy in Groningen from 1835-42, with
Jan Adam Kruseman, and then at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam
under Jan Willem Pieneman. From 1845 to 1847, he lived and worked in Paris as
an apprentice in the studio of history painter Francois-Edouard Picot, and as a
student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, under Horace Vernet and Paul Delaroche.
His early work was inspired by the later paintings of Rembrandt, as well as
that of his teachers. He also visited Germany, studying the German Romantic
artists. He returned to Holland in 1847, but in 1855, while recuperating from
an illness in Zandvoort, he was inspired by the local fishing community.
Shortly after, he transitioned from portrait and history paintings to his best-known
subject matter: genre scenes of rural labourers, which invoked comparison with
the work of Jean-Francois Millet. Israëls also painted scenes of Jewish life in
the Dutch ghettos. In 1870 Israëls moved from Amsterdam to The Hague; popular
among both critics and artists (including the young Vincent van Gogh), he
became the best-known member of the Hague School of painters, gaining an
international reputation and exhibiting in Paris and London, as well as in
Holland. He won the Grand Prix in both the 1889 and 1900 Expositions
Universelles in Paris, was awarded the Cross of the Legion d’Honneur in 1867,
and was later made a Commander. Jozef Israëls died in The Hague, The
Netherlands on 10 August 1911. His work is in collections worldwide including
the Mesdag collection in the Hague; the Van Gogh Museum, and the Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam; the Dordrecht Gallery, South Holland; and the Aberdeen Art Gallery,
the Ashmolean, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Glasgow museum, Museums Sheffield,
and the National Gallery, London.
Source:
Ben Uri Gallery and Museum
