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COLLECTION CONNECTION
COLLECTION CONNECTION
Silent Work: Dutch Girls Sewing by Israëls and Liebermann
Tamera Lenz Muente, Curatorial Assistant/Exhibition Coordinator
In Sewing School at Katwijk (fig. 1), in
the Taft Museum of Art’s permanent
collection, Jozef Israëls painted an
elderly sewing teacher in a black dress
and white cap who sits at a table next
to a window carefully cutting a piece
of white fabric. Across from her a
young girl winds thread onto a spool.
Seven more students are seated to
the woman’s right, engrossed in their
needlework. Each girl wears a white
cap, full blue skirt, and shawl pulled
tightly around her neck. The shawls,
leafless trees outside the window, and
the foot warmers below each of the
girls’ feet tell us it is winter, and the
room is probably chilly. However, the
light that bathes the interior adds a
warm, inviting feeling, as does the cat
curled up near the center of the floor.
The cozy scene extols the virtues of
domestic activity and the passing of
knowledge from an older generation
to a younger one.
Max Liebermann’s drawing Dutch
Orphan Girls (fig. 2), on loan for the
special exhibition Romanticism to PostImpressionism: 19th-Century German
Art from the Milwaukee Art Museum,
depicts three girls seated on a bench
in a courtyard. A younger girl sits between two older girls who are teaching her how to sew. The two older
girls wear white caps, and all three
wear white aprons over their summer
dresses. Each concentrates hard on
her task. Sunlight streams through
trees and dapples the garden path.
The tranquil, pleasant scene, like
Israëls’s painting, shows the instruction of a younger generation.
The striking similarity between Israëls’s
painting and Liebermann’s drawing
is far from a coincidence. Both art-
Fig. 1. Jozef Israëls (Dutch, 1824–1911), Sewing School at Katwijk, 1881, oil on canvas. Taft Museum of Art
ists were influenced by 17th-century
Dutch art. Both made sketches of
common people in the Netherlands.
But, perhaps most importantly, the two
artists shared a close friendship and
were inspired by each other’s work.
This friendly alliance between Liebermann, one of the leading figures of
modern German art, and Israëls, one
of the most influential members of
the Hague School, contributed to the
Hague School’s strong influence on
German art.
Both Israëls and Liebermann acknowledged their interest in 17th-century
Dutch masters, which can be seen
in these two works. Paintings of
women engaged in household chores
were popular in the 17th-century
Netherlands. Most often, a single
figure was seated in an interior lit
by a window. Commonly portrayed
activities included cooking, caring for
children, spinning, and—most influential to these works by Israëls and
Liebermann—sewing. Such paintings
illustrated that a woman’s proper
place was in the home and that it was
her duty to see that it was peacefully
well-kept. Widely read emblem books,
which carried pictures and writings
containing moral messages, also instructed women about the importance
of domestic virtue and urged them to
pass on their knowledge to the next
generation.
These values persisted in the 19thcentury. Girls could learn domestic
skills in sewing schools, where the
students were often orphans who had
no mother to teach them personally.
Many widows made their livelihoods
COLLECTION CONNECTION
17
as sewing teachers, like the elderly
woman in Israëls’s painting.
Israëls enjoyed sketching girls and
women at their needlework as well as
other working Dutch people. He set
most of his compositions in interiors
illuminated by natural light from a
window falling on one or two figures
completely absorbed in work. He
made many drawings of individual
figures that he later combined for
the composition of Sewing School
at Katwijk, many from a stay in this
small fishing village some 25 years
before he completed the painting in
his studio.
Liebermann worked in a similar
fashion, sketching figures at work and
later using the drawings as references
for studio paintings. He resided in
Berlin but traveled to the Netherlands
annually to sketch common people
at work. Some of his most popular
paintings came from studies he made
at an Amsterdam orphanage, where
he sketched groups of girls sewing
in classrooms and courtyards. Dutch
Orphan Girls portrays such a subject.
Unlike a preparatory sketch, however,
it is likely that the Milwaukee drawing was done after he completed the
painting of the subject, which now
hangs at the Hamburg Kunsthalle.
The drawing lacks some details of the
painting, such as birds feeding on the
garden path, a building façade, and
two more girls obscured by foliage in
the background. Liebermann drew this
simplified version of the composition
before selling the painting, perhaps
to keep as a reference or model for a
graphic reproduction.
compositions likely influenced Israëls’s
shift from depicting mostly solitary
figures to portraying group activity as
in Sewing School at Katwijk.
The two artists met in 1880 during
one of Liebermann’s trips to the Netherlands and became lifelong friends.
Along with Israëls’s son Isaac, they
often worked together and commented on each other’s paintings. Liebermann’s penchant for multiple figure
Late in his life, Israëls entrusted
Liebermann to write his biography.
Liebermann so admired the elder
Israëls that when he began the project, he feared he was “far too fond of
Israëls to be able to write about him.
. . . Only a lyric poet could do full jus-
Fig. 2. Max Liebermann (German, 1847–1935), Dutch Orphan Girls (detail), about 1885–90, chalk on wove paper.
Milwaukee Art Museum, Purchase, René von Schleinitz Memorial Fund
tice to Israëls, for his every picture is
a poem that has changed to colour.”1
He overcame this apprehension to
write a sensitive portrait of Israëls that
was published in 1901 and reveals
his esteem for his fellow artist. Their
paintings of the Dutch working class
remain a testament to their close personal and professional relationship.
1. Max Liebermann, “Jozef Israels: The Man and His
Work,” trans. by Albert Kinross. Pall Mall Magazine 25
(Sept.–Dec. 1901): 25–26.