Isaac Israels Dutch 1865-1934

Collection Alvares Correa, Paris

Sale The Hague (Glerum), 14 May 1990, lot 113, illustrated

Isaac Israels was one of the founders of Amsterdam Impressionism, a movement that blossomed in the Netherlands during the last quarter of the 19th century. He acquired great fame with his paintings of crowded streets, dance halls and fashion houses, executed in a colourful, exuberant style. Israels sought to capture life, to hold a moment that struck him, and this spontaneity still emanates from his paintings. ´He indicates things quickly and briefly, yet sufficiently to register what his penetrating observation found important´, the Dutch art historian A.M. Hammacher once wrote.

The present lot was executed during a stay in London. Israels went there in the spring of 1913 and lived in a studio on Fitzroy Street 6. He stayed there until the fall of 1914 and kept his London studio up to 1920. The city of London became an important source of inspiration to him. Israels was fascinated by the crowded streets of West End and the Cockney girls walking amidst of the traffic, but also painted elegantly dressed amazones in Hyde Park, along Rotten Row, down the Thames. The artist Jan Poortenaar, who also visited London, wrote about this: ‘At Sunday Hyde Park is a real parade; Rotten Row, the old route du Roi, is the road of fiery horses with less fiery amazones’.

The present lot is certainly one of his most successful views of Hyde Park. Israels captures the amazones and strolling ladies in lively ´French´ colours and broadly applied, flat brushstrokes. Clearly, he was still working in the vein of his fruitful Paris years, during which his palette had become more radiant and his style much more loose. At the time Israels painted this attractive view of Hyde Park, his style had reached maturity, keeping the time delay between his observation and its registration as short as possible. Consequently Isaac Israels was by far the most successful Dutch impressionist of his time.