Children of the Sea

Israels was born to Jewish parents in the Dutch town of Groningen.  After finally convincing his father that he could not—would not—pursue a career in business as his father wished—he trained in his hometown, Amsterdam, and Paris. He finally settled in The Hague where he became a leading member of The Hague School of Dutch painters and eventually, garnered international celebrity. He is often compared to the French landscape painter Millet, but Israels’s works are almost always more melancholic in character than the Frenchman’s. His critics and admirers alike said that he painted “gloom and suffering.” His images of the sea were initiated by a trip to Zandvoort, while he was convalescing from an illness. The present drawing is one of several seascapes that relates to a much-admired painting now in Amsterdam, Children of the Sea.