
The Good Samaritan
1905 · Charcoal and red chalk heightened with white chalk, with traces of purple pastel, over graphite on grayish-green wove paper
Sheet: 47.3 × 65.6 cm (18 5/8 × 25 7/8 in.)
Art Institute of Chicago

Jozef Israels painted peasant and working-class life in a realist idiom distinguished by precise attention to light and texture. A central figure of the Hague School, he sustained a decades-long engagement with rural Dutch interiors and village communities, rendering their domestic spaces and labor with unflinching observation. His work bridges 19th-century Dutch genre painting and the emergence of modern social realism, establishing a visual vocabulary that would influence northern European painting into the 20th century.
Source: Moma Bulk 2026 05 04 · Trust score: 92% · Updated 25d ago