Jozef Israëls (; 27 January 1824 – 12 August 1911) was a Dutch
painter
Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...
. He was a leading member of the group of landscape painters referred to as the
Hague School and was, during his lifetime, "the most respected Dutch artist of the second half of the nineteenth century."
Early life
He was born in
Groningen
Groningen ( , ; ; or ) is the capital city and main municipality of Groningen (province), Groningen province in the Netherlands. Dubbed the "capital of the north", Groningen is the largest place as well as the economic and cultural centre of ...
to
Jewish
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
parents. His father, Hartog Abraham Israëls, was a
money changer and intended for Jozef to be a businessman. His mother was Mathilda Salomon née Polack, and she hoped that Jozef would become a
rabbi
A rabbi (; ) is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi—known as ''semikha''—following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of t ...
. When he was eleven years old, he attended Minerva Academy in Groningen and he began to study painting.
[ Jozef Israëls]
at the Netherlands Institute for Art History
He subsequently continued his studies in
Amsterdam
Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...
, studying at the Royal Academy for Fine Arts, which later became the
State Academy for Fine Arts. 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
François-Édouard Picot's studio and taking classes at the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts under
James Pradier,
Horace Vernet
Émile Jean-Horace Vernet (; 30 June 178917 January 1863) more commonly known as simply Horace Vernet, was a French painter of battles, portraits, and Orientalist subjects.
Biography
Early career
Vernet was born to Carle Vernet, another famo ...
, and
Paul Delaroche. 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.
Sensibility

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 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 that they were painted with gloom and suffering.

He began with historical and dramatic subjects in the romantic style of the day. After an illness, he went to recuperate his strength at the fishing town of
Zandvoort near
Haarlem
Haarlem (; predecessor of ''Harlem'' in English language, English) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands. It is the capital of the Provinces of the Nether ...
, and there he was struck by the daily tragedy of life. Henceforth, he was possessed by a new vein of artistic expression, sincerely realistic, full of emotion and pity.
Among his more important subsequent works are ''The Zandvoort Fisherman'' (in the Amsterdam Gallery), ''The Silent House'' (which gained a gold medal at the
Brussels Salon, 1858), and ''Village Poor'' (a prize at Manchester).
In 1862, he achieved great success in London with his ''
The Shipwrecked Mariner,'' purchased by a Mr Young, and ''The Cradle,'' two pictures that the ''
Athenaeum'' magazine described as the most touching pictures of the exhibition.
A portrait of Jozef Israëls was painted by the Scottish painter
George Paul Chalmers .
In 1886, he was made an Officer in the
Order of Leopold.
Later work
His later works include ''The Widower'' (in the Mesdag collection), ''When we grow Old'', ''Peasant Family at the Table'' and ''Alone in the World'' (Van Gogh Museum / Amsterdam Gallery), ''An Interior'' (Dordrecht Gallery), ''A Frugal Meal'' (Glasgow Museum), ''Toilers of the Sea,'' ''Speechless Dialogue,'' ''Between the Fields and the Seashore,'' ''The Bric-a-brac Seller'' (which gained medals of honor at the
Paris Exhibition of 1900).
File:Langsmoedersgraf1.jpg, '' Passing Mother's Grave'', 1856
Image:Josef Israels 001.jpg, ''We Grow Old'', 1878
Image:Jozef_israels_solo_en_mundo.jpg, '' Alone in the World'', 1881
Image:Israëls-A Jewish Wedding-1903.jpg, : '' A Jewish Wedding'', 1903
''David Singing before Saul,'' one of his later works, seems to hint at a return on the part of the venerable artist to the
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...
esque note of his youth.
[In his native land, Israëls was late in life viewed as the "reincarnation of Rembrandt. In 1893, the painter and art critic Jan Veth wrote: ''Rembrandt's great pathos seems to be resurrected in Jozef Israëls''". Wetering, pages 133-4.] As a watercolour painter and etcher he produced a vast number of works, which, like his oil paintings, are full of deep feeling. They are generally treated in broad masses of light and shade, which give prominence to the principal subject without any neglect of detail.
Israëls probably influenced many other painters; one them was the Scottish painter
Robert McGregor (1847–1922).
Personal life
He married Aleida née Schaap and together the couple had two children: a daughter, Mathilde Anna Israëls, and a son,
Isaac Lazarus Israëls, born in 1865, who also became a fine art painter. On August 12, 1911 Jozef Israëls died in
Scheveningen,
The Hague
The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...
.
References
Attribution:
*
Bibliography
*Jan Veth, ''Mannen of Betekenis: Jozef Israëls''
*Chesneau, ''Peintres français et étrangers''
*Philippe Zilcken, ''Peintres hollandais modernes'' (1893)
*Dumas, ''Illustrated Biographies of Modern Artists'' (1882–1884)
*J. de Meester, in Max Roose's ''Dutch Painters of the Nineteenth Century'' (1898)
*Jozef Israëls, ''Spain: the Story of a Journey'' (1900).
External links
*
*
Hecht Museum
BBCGenealogy IsraelsBiographical notes and dates of Jozef Isräels in the Dutch R.K.D. Archive
Free images of the art of Jozef Isräels in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
Video of the artist's paintings
{{DEFAULTSORT:Israels, Jozef
1824 births
1911 deaths
Jewish Dutch artists
19th-century Dutch painters
Dutch male painters
Jewish painters
Painters from Groningen
Painters from Amsterdam
Hague School
20th-century Dutch painters
Honorary members of the Royal Academy
19th-century Dutch male artists
20th-century Dutch male artists