THE SHIPWRECKED MARINER
By JOSEF ISRAELS


THE SHIPWRECKED MARINER
JOSEF ISRAELS (1824-1911)
IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY, LONDON

Josef Israels was the greatest painter in the modern Dutch school, and has been aptly described as "the Dutch Millet." His life, in some respects, resembled Millet's, and he was subject to some of the same influences that were at work upon the latter painter.

His first ambition was to be a rabbi, but when he left school he joined his father's small banking business. He was twenty years of age when he went to Amsterdam to the studio of Jan Kruseman, a fashionable painter. He roamed in the Ghetto of that city, entranced with the picturesque streets and the still more picturesque people, but not yet dreaming of putting them on canvas. Later he went to Paris and studied with Paul Delaroche just after Millet had left him. Like Millet, he studied and starved, and, after his return to Amsterdam, like him, he painted conventional pictures for a living and found the true bent of his genius by accident. A serious illness caused him to go to Zandvoort, a small fishing village, to recuperate, and here, living in solitude, he learned the poetry, romance and beauty of lowly life. What the great world failed to show he learned in the fishing village, and he so filled himself with its life, and studied its scenery and atmosphere so closely, that his future course in art was made clear.

In his masterly canvases, in which subject and atmosphere are in perfect harmony, he reveals himself as a powerful painter and a tender poet. His pictures derive a grandeur and breadth from their very simplicity, yet, with all their freedom from unnecessary detail, they display a keen observation that appreciates and reveals the significance of minor things. His chief charm to the general picture-lover is that he is a poet-painter, and that quality is well shown in the present painting.

From the book "Famous Paintings" Volume 2 printed in 1913.

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Jozef Israels Online
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Famous Paintings in this Series





James Archer
My Great Grandmother


Bashkirtseff
The Meeting


Bouguereau
Charity


John Brett
From the Dorsetshire Cliffs


Arnesby Brown
The River Bank


Joseph Clark
Mother's Darling


John Constable
The Hay-Wain


Jean Baptiste Camille
Corot
The Fisherman's Hut


Jean Baptiste Camille
Corot
A Flood


Leonardo Da Vinci
Monna Lisa


Edouard Detaille
The Dream


Henri Fantin-Latour
Flowers


Thomas Gainsborough
Queen Charlotte


Thomas Gainsborough
The Market Cart


Jean Baptiste Greuze
The Head of a Girl


Jean Baptiste Greuze
Fidelity


James Clark Hook
Home With the Tide


Alfred William Hunt
Windsor Castle


Josef Israels
The Shipwrecked Mariner


B.W. Leader
The Stream in Summer-time


Madame Vigee Le Brun
Portrait of the Artist

Alphonse Legros
A Canal With a Fisherman


Anton Mauve
Watering Horses


J.L.E. Meissonier
The Cavalier


Sir J.E. Millais
Speak! Speak!


Sir J.E. Mallais
My First Sermon


George Morland
The Reckoning


George Morland
The Inside of a Stable


Murillo
The Immaculate Conception
of the Virgin


Alfred Parsons
When Nature Painted
All Things Gay


Ralph Peacock
The Sisters


Rembrandt
Syndics of the
Cloth Merchants' Guild


Guido Reni
"Ecce Homo"


Sir Joshua Reynolds
Portrait of Mrs. Richard Hoare
With Her Infant Son


Briton Riviere
The Temptation
in the Wilderness


Dante Gabriel
Rossetti
Day Dreams


John Singer Sargent
Miss Ellen Terry
as Lady Macbeth


Lady Stanley
(Dorothy Tennant)
His First Offence


Jan Steen
Grace Before Meat


Marcus Stone
On the Road from
Waterloo to Paris


Constant Troyon
Watering Cattle


H.S. Tuke
"All Hands to the Pumps"


Velazquez
King Philip IV. of Spain


S.E. Waller
Sweethearts and Wives


Thomas Webster
The Smile

Index
Famous Paintings Volume 1
Art Gallery

Index
Famous Paintings Volume 2
Art Gallery

Index
Art Appreciation
Lessons