Station: [18] Isaac Israëls: "Cool Early Spring on Scheveningen Pier", not dated

The painting Cool Early Spring on Scheveningen Pier by the Dutch painter Isaac Israëls shows a handful of people ambling along the diagonally cropped, wide beach promenade. Due to this perspective, the viewer, too, is incorporated as a stroller into the scenery of the fashionable Dutch lido of the early 1920s. A woman wearing a short dress and hat walks next to a girl enveloped in a hooded cloak from the middle of the picture towards the foreground. Ochre and brown hues and grey bands of clouds suggest the atmosphere of a dull spring day. The fleeting moment is captured especially through the vigorous application of paint reminiscent of a watercolour. At an early age, Israëls already described his subsequent artistic credo: “My ideal is to render a beautiful subject observed in nature in the most direct way from nature. The studio air has a crippling effect on me.” From the 1890s on, Israëls painted outdoors, depicting the hustle and bustle in Paris and London as well as on the beaches of Holland, France and Italy. He also focused on scenes in bars, music halls or parks, subjects closely linking him to Edgar Degas and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Along with George Hendrik Breitner, Isaac Israëls is regarded as the most important Dutch impressionist.