Jozef Israëls (1824-1911)
Children Playing on the Beach (Spelende kinderen op het strand(, ca. 1906
Oil on canvas
Courtesy of the Leonid and Tatiana Nevzlin Collection
Must Know
Jozef Israëls, the most respected Dutch artist of the second half of the 19th century, originally painted this work in 1863. It became so popular that the artist created many variations of it over the years. here, the older boy literally carries the weight of his family on his shoulders, while the little boat evokes the difficulties of adulthood as observed by children from afar.
More Info
Josef Israels was a Dutch Jewish painter born in Groningen (a city in the Northern Netherlands) in January 1824. His father was Hartog Abraham Israel, a professional broker and merchant who had married Mathilda Solomon Polack. Jozef was the third-born of ten children and he had six brothers and three sisters. As is the case of many young aspiring artists, Jozef’s father did not see his son’s future as an artist but wanted him to carry on the family business and it was only after a long struggle and great determination that Jozef persuaded his father to let him study art.
he began with historical and dramatic subjects in the romantic style of the day. By chance, after an illness, he went to recuperate his strength at the fishing-town of Zandvoort near Haarlem, and there he was struck by the daily tragedy of life. Thenceforth he was possessed by a new vein of artistic expression, sincerely realistic, full of emotion.
The theme of children playing on the beach with toy boats was first developed by Israëls in 1863. Variations of the subject became immensely popular. The demand for paintings of children playing on the beach was so great that this subject became one of the most recurrent themes in Israëls’ oeuvre.
The present composition is a delightful variant of the ‘children of the sea’ theme. The brother and sister are playing with the small toy boats made from wooden shoes. A larger vessel can be seen in a distance. They are fishermen children spending their childhood years in the bright air and endless distance of the Dutch sea. The light color palette matches the cheerfulness of the subject, which became a trademark of the artist from the 1880s.
