Bidspirit auction | ISRAELS, JOZEF. (Dutch artist, 1824-1911).

ISRAELS, JOZEF. (Dutch artist, 1824-1911). Artist’s statement written in English. AUTOGRAPH MANUS CRIPT SIGNED. “Never say what a pleasant picture because the subject represents a pretty story or incident. Also it is not right to call a picture dreadful because it treated a mournful subject. A picture is dreadful when badly painted and pleasant when it gives you artistic enjoyment… Art is as nature, it exists for itself, not for amusement. Therefore, you must accept all artistic feeling as it exists.” One page, with integral blank. 8vo. The Hague, 15th August, 1888. A charming, wonderfully concise and yet insightful philosophical commentary on the nature of art, aesthetics, and the appreciation of art, penned by Jozef Israëls, perhaps the leading Jewish artist and ”the most respected Dutch artist of the second half of the 19th century.” Born into a Dutch Jewish family in 1824, at the age of 11 Israëls started lessons at Groningen’s Akademie Minerva. In 1842 he went to Amsterdam to study at the Royal Academy for Fine Arts, moving to Paris in 1845 where he perfected his academic style of painting at the École des Beaux-Arts. Returning to Amsterdam in 1847, in 1870 he moved to The Hague and became a leading member of the Hague School of landscape painters. In his early period Israëls painted historical and dramatic subjects in the romantic style of the day. He later developed a new vein of artistic expression, sincerely realistic, restrained and full of emotion and pity. Of this period, which earned him international fame, it was written that his art depicts “a piercing note of woe.” Critics compared his brushwork and warm colors with the work of Rembrandt. Israëls won many international prizes for his art and taught numerous pupils, among them his son Isaac.