Login or register for tests, newsletters and community.

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.

Large files of this public domain print are available at Stock Photos at Songs of Praise
(Firefox users must click again on the large photo to see the very large image.)

Online "Name the Painting"

Jozef Israels Online
at ArtCyclopedia

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