Isaac Israels artwork • watercolour • drawing • previously for sale A busy day, Scheveningen beach

Isaac Israels, together with George Hendrik Breitner, was the leading representative of the group of Amsterdam Impressionists. He painted fragments of life he chanced across in the capital’s shopping streets, coffee houses and café-chantants, where busy urban living was played out. In a few apt charcoal lines or quick, spontaneous brushstrokes, with subtle colour accents, he captured everything he saw. Israels also painted beach scenes at Scheveningen and was a skilful portraitist. Before the outbreak of the First World War, Scheveningen was a fashionable seaside resort where the chicly dressed 'haute bourgoisie' and aristocracy enjoyed the bathing season in comfortable hotels with large terraces and thus were a source of inspiration for Israels. In 1921 he wrote about Scheveningen to his friend Jan Veth that he was perplexed by everything he saw there.