Jozef Israels

Jozef Israëls was one of the most renowned artists of the Hague School, who skillfully fused seventeenth century Dutch genre painting traditions, with nineteenth century Realist and en plein air techniques.  He combined his observations of the peasant class with studies of natural light and atmosphere, thereby creating gritty, realistic scenes of everyday life.  Israëls was undoubtedly influenced by his illustrious seventeenth century predecessors such as Jan van Goyen, Pieter de Hooch and Rembrandt, but he also interpreted their legacy in a decidedly modern fashion.  His artistic education took him to Amsterdam and Paris, where he became familiar with Barbizon and Realist artists, and his work began to focus on the quiet but harsh life of peasants combined with observations of light and atmosphere.  Forsaking the political or social-class commentary for the most part, Israëls concentrated on the dynamics of family life.

Making Pancakes is infused with these sentiments and influences.  A somber interior is the setting for a meal of pancakes which is being prepared over a coal stove by a kerchief-bedecked woman as her children patiently watch her.  The figures are depicted with a quiet pride reminiscent of Millet, with whose work Israëls was familiar with and of which he thought highly.  Indeed, Israëls' observation of Millet's work is an apt description of his own narrative objectives: "...that the labourer ploughing the land, the mother feeding her suckling babe, might have the same loving care bestowed upon them and be acknowledged to have an equally good claim to beauty as any object of creation which surround us."

Israëls paid equally careful attention to the depiction of the interior as to the figures in his composition, forsaking sanitized sentimentality for a well-observed, atmospheric setting. A raw, bold brushstroke is used to evoke the soot-stained walls and uneven dirt floor. The dark room is illuminated by a small shaft of light from a window at the right of the composition, and a few smoldering embers of the coal fire.  In Israëls’ work, "...the room itself takes up the story; it becomes spacious, the abode of dim atmospheres, of tone values and moods of all degrees absorbing even the inmates itself...it happens in the case of the various gatherings round the hearth where the firelight and the late sun, the smoke of wood, the steam from the kettle and the atmosphere of the room blend softly together." (M. Eisler, Jozef Israëls, London, 1924, p. 21)

The pancake baker is a Dutch motif which can be traced back to the sixteenth or seventeenth century.  Israëls painted this subject often, and it proved popular with American and British collectors.