Circle of Isaac Israëls (Amsterdam 1865 – 1934 La Haye)

Painted with rapid, expressive strokes on a simple cardboard support, this arresting study captures a young woman surrendered to sleep. The broad swathes of white bedding, the muted earth-and-blue palette and the close-cropped viewpoint point to the fin-de-siècle fascination with private, unguarded moments championed by the French Nabis and the Amsterdam Impressionists.

Stylistically the work sits at the crossroads of Édouard Vuillard’s intimate bedroom scenes (Jeune femme au lit, 1894) and the gestural bravura of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Le Lit (1892). The swift, confident touch, restrained chromatics and use of cardboard, however, align just as convincingly with the Amsterdam school—most notably Isaac Israëls, who produced several oils of sleeping models (see Sleeping Woman, c. 1920) in a near-identical format. Whether created in Paris or Amsterdam, the painting embodies the era’s shift from posed studio tableaux to fleeting impressions of real life, distilled here into a single, hauntingly quiet image.