Reclining Nude

Israëls painted this reclining nude in 1917, the fourth year of the First World War. The Netherlands stayed neutral through that war, so while much of Europe was at the front, Amsterdam and The Hague kept their studios, their models and their exhibitions running, and Israëls went on painting from life. The nude was a subject he returned to often in these years, working from a model on a couch in loose, quick brushwork rather than the careful finish an academy would have wanted. He treats the figure much as he treated his café and beach scenes, as something caught in a moment rather than posed for eternity. The paint is thin and the background barely described, so almost everything rests on the line of the body and the light falling across it.