Aaron Anderson
Specialist, Head of Sale
Lot 69
Jozef Israels(Dutch, 1824-1911)The toy sailboat 15 1/4 x 22in (38.8 x 55.9cm)
20 November 2019, 13:00 EST
New YorkSold for US$35,075 inc. premium
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Jozef Israels (Dutch, 1824-1911)
The toy sailboat
signed 'Jozef Israels' (lower right)
oil on canvas
15 1/4 x 22in (38.8 x 55.9cm)
signed 'Jozef Israels' (lower right)
oil on canvas
15 1/4 x 22in (38.8 x 55.9cm)
Footnotes
Provenance
Private collection, Mr. and Mrs. Louis Shapiro, Chicago, Illinois and Beverly Hills, California;
Thence by descent to the present owner.
The theme of children playing on the beach with toy boats was first developed by Israëls in 1863 in his painting Fishermen's Children/ Children of the Sea, now in the collection of the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Variations of the subject became immensely popular with collectors in England and the United States, where the Amsterdam dealer Preyer kept a steady supply in the New York branch of his dealership.
The demand for paintings of children playing on the beach was so great that this subject became one of the most recurrent themes in Israëls' oeuvre. In his later years, Israëls would execute these 'potboilers' for sale only and they would find their way abroad directly from his studio.
The present composition is a delightful variant of the 'children of the sea' theme. The brother and sister are pushing a small sail boat while a larger vessel can be seen in a distance. They are fishermen children spending their childhood years in innocent ignorance of life's hardships to come. The light color palette matches the cheerfulness of the subject, which became a trademark of the artist in the 1880s.