Isaac Israels

Isaac Israels was a regular visitor to the beach resort of Scheveningen, a small town near the Hague, often spending the summer months of his youth there with his father. Guests included Edouard Manet and Max Liebermann, with the beach being the perfect location for the artist to explore the changing light of sun and sea. Like his father Jozef, Isaac was more interested in people than landscapes and interiors, and by the 1890s, the artist increasingly painted en plein air.

The present work likely depicts Sophie de Vries, a close friend whom the artist painted several times.  His depictions of well-to-do ladies painted in an impressionistic style using a light palette and radiant colour encapsulate the turn-of-the century Zeitgeist, finding echoes in the work of Spaniard Joaquín Sorolla, Dane Peder Severin Krøyer, and German Max Liebermann. All of these artists were united by their choice of subjects, working methods and their interest in and preoccupation with the effects of light.