Isaac Israëls
Son of the Hague School artist Jozef Israels, Isaac Israels was a leading figure of the Amsterdam Impressionism movement, renowned for his highly personal, luminous and free brushwork and subjects from his travels to Paris, London, and Indonesia.
At the mere age of thirteen, Israels attended the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague where he befriended Georg Hendrik Breitner. Between 1880 and 1884, Israels and Breitner were both particularly fascinated by military subjects and in 1882 Israels debuted at the Salon with Military Burial. In 1886, the two artists enrolled at the Reijksacademie in Amsterdam but after only a year the pair left the academy and joined the circle of the Tachtigers (or ‘Eighties’ group), a progressive Dutch movement of writers and artists.