Mother With Children In The Bois De Boulogne In Paris

Isaac Lazarus Israëls (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈizɑk ˈlaːzaːrʏs ˈɪsraːɛls]; 3 February 1865 – 7 October 1934) was a Dutch painter associated with the Amsterdam Impressionism movement.

The son of Jozef Israëls, one of the most respected painters of the Hague School, and Aleida Schaap, Isaac Israëls displayed precocious artistic talent from an early age. Israëls was Jewish.

Between 1880 and 1882 he studied at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, where he met George Hendrik Breitner who was to become a lifelong friend. In 1881, when he was 16, he sold a painting, Bugle Practice, even before it was finished to the artist and collector Hendrik Willem Mesdag. Two portraits he made in the same year of his grandmother and a family friend, Nannette Enthoven (below), attest to the technical ability he had attained by that age.

Starting in 1878, Israëls made annual visits to the Salon des Artistes Français with his father and in 1882 made his debut there with Military Burial. In the 1885 Salon he received an honourable mention for his Transport of Colonial Soldiers.