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When Jews Found a Place Among European Artists
January 11, 2002
By GRACE GLUECK
Except for Camille Pissarro and maybe Max Liebermann, you
may not have heard of most of the artists in "The Emergence
of Jewish Artists in 19th-Century Europe" at the Jewish
Museum.
But star names are not important here. The salient fact is
that after centuries of isolation from Western European
culture, there were Jewish artists. Before the 19th
century, Jews were absent from art history in part because
of their own religious restrictions, to say nothing of the
legal limitations on where they could live, work and study.
The liberating ideas of the Enlightenment in the 18th
century and the French Revolution helped to change the
social and political status of the Jews, and by the
mid-19th century they had begun to establish identities as
artists within the mainstream of European culture. Some
kept to Jewish subjects; others ventured into more
challenging arenas, like, well, nudes and the avant-garde.
But what they had in common was a new freedom to choose
art among other professions. They could study in Rome or
Paris, join collegial societies and compete freely for
honors and commissions. And they quickly seized their
opportunities. The show, organized by Susan Tumarkin
Goodman, senior curator at large, is billed as the first
museum survey of Jewish artists in Europe between the
1820's and the 1910's. It sets out nearly 70 works by 21 of
the leading Jewish artists active in England, France,
Italy, Germany, Holland, Austria-Hungary and Poland.
The artist often described as the "first Jewish painter" is
Moritz Daniel Oppenheim (1800-82), born in a ghetto
community near Frankfurt, who was able to study in Rome and
later became a citizen of Frankfurt. Although he is
remembered today mainly for schmaltzy paintings of Jewish
family life that were made into widely sold prints, he also
did well-regarded portraits, particularly of the
Rothschilds, the Jewish banking family, who became his
patrons.
Two are in the show, handsome likenesses of Charlotte von
Rothschild and her cousin Lionel, whose spectacular wedding
in 1836 also melded two of the great European fortunes.
Charlotte is seated in front of Mount Vesuvius, a reference
to the bank in Naples owned by her father, and Lionel is
seen against the background of an English park, a comment
on his father's clout in London.
A more poignant Oppenheim painting comments directly on the
pull that Jews of the period felt between the observance of
their religion and accommodation to the outside world. In
"The Return of the Jewish Volunteer From the Wars of
Liberation to His Family Still Living in Accordance With
Old Customs" (1833-34), he depicts a wounded Hussar
reunited with his Orthodox family on the Sabbath, after
fighting for the Germans in the 1813-14 Napoleonic wars.
The family greets him lovingly despite his uncovered head
and the Iron Cross, an unwelcome Christian symbol, that he
wears. The depiction of the two generations is meant to
show the conflict between Jewish tradition and loyalty to
the state, a theme embedded in the consciousness of many
Jewish painters.
The ambitious field of history painting attracted a painter
born to a wealthy Polish-Jewish family, Maurycy Gottlieb
(1856-79). To that end he studied in Munich, but with the
unconventional aim of using Jewish history as his text. One
surprising result was the unfinished "Christ Preaching at
Capernaum" (1878-79), a New Testament episode.
This huge canvas, whose composition was borrowed from
Rembrandt, shows Jesus as Jewish, preaching in a synagogue
and wearing a skullcap and prayer shawl as he delivers,
before an open Torah scroll, a message of togetherness for
peoples of the world. Expressing his universalistic vision
through such paintings was one way in which the artist
hoped to bring about brotherhood between Jews and Poles and
help "eradicate all the prejudices against my people," as
he wrote to a friend.
A family of Jewish artists in England attuned to mainstream
culture were the Solomons, Abraham (1824- 62), Rebecca
(1832-86) and Simeon (1840-1905). Born to prosperous
parents who developed contacts with high English society,
the Solomons were much affected by the Victorian sentiments
and the pre-Raphaelite aesthetic of their day.
A painting by Abraham, "First Class - The Meeting and at
First Meeting Loved" (1854), caused a scandal when it was
exhibited at the Royal Academy. It depicts a young man and
woman flirting - to our eyes chastely - in a railway car as
her male chaperon dozes. Knuckling under to Victorian
mores, the artist repainted the scene, this time with the
chaperon properly awake and seated between the now docile
couple. (Only the first version is shown here.)
But Abraham's younger brother, Simeon, was involved in a
much heavier breach of morals. Well known by the time he
reached his early 20's for his Jewish religious subjects,
painted in pre-Raphaelite style, he broadened his reach to
include works of religious mysticism as well as pagan
themes.
Idealized figures of Italian Renaissance art served as his
models, and he was regarded by his pre-Raphaelite
colleagues as an important Symbolist. But his homoerotic
approach brought public disfavor. And his open
homosexuality caused his conviction for indecency in 1873.
Ostracized by his family, he became an alcoholic and
eventually died in a London poorhouse.
His 1892 self-portrait, "Head (St. Peter, or `Help, Lord,
or I Perish')," which shows a bearded, skullcapped head
floating on turbulent waters, is an eerie, over-the-top and
very Victorian attempt to illuminate his touching plight.
There were, of course, more aesthetically adventurous
Jewish artists. One was Liebermann (1847- 1935), born in
Germany to a bourgeois family. Although he studied in
Berlin and Weimar, he opposed the German academic tradition
and at first turned his attention to French painting à la
Millet and the Barbizon School, painting people at humble
pursuits.
Later he melded realism with Impressionism to produce
paintings of the leisure class, like "Bathing Boys" (1900),
a lively beach scene of frolicking youths. Retaining his
Jewish identity, he also painted a series in Amsterdam's
Jewish neighborhood, among them "Jewish Street in
Amsterdam" (1908), a heavily brushed view of customers
around a food-laden pushcart.
The founder and first president of the breakaway,
internationalist-oriented art movement known as the Berlin
Secession, Lieberman was denounced in Germany for his lack
of national pride. But he held top posts in the Berlin art
community, capping an acclaimed career that no previous
artist of Jewish origin had enjoyed.
A lesser light was Jacob Meyer de Haan (1852-95), born to a
wealthy Orthodox family in Amsterdam. For a while he
painted Jewish themes, albeit ambivalently, but in 1888 he
moved to Paris, became acquainted with members of the
French avant- garde and then went to Brittany with Paul
Gauguin where he became part of the Pont-Aven school.
His "Self-Portrait" (1889-91), depicting him liberated from
conventional dress in Breton costume, is a respectable
Pont-Aven image, its strong outlines and non-natural color
affected by this anti-Impressionist group. But today de
Haan is remembered, if at all, less for his own work than
his appearance in Gauguin's.
The 19th-century Jewish artist most in sync with the
secular world, and perhaps the most famous, was Pissarro
(1830-1903), one of the founding fathers of Impressionism.
Born in the Virgin Islands, the son of a Sephardic Jewish
businessman, Pissarro, although regarded as a Jew by his
colleagues, early on took a negative view of religion,
including Judaism, as "inappropriate" for a modern,
rational society.
A radical and an anarchist, he was interested in peasant
life and the land rather than in the institutions of
capitalism, which he railed against. But his paintings are
more concerned with aesthetics than politics. "Avenue de
l'Opéra, Place du Théâtre Français: Misty Weather" (1898)
offers a wide panoramic view down the long avenue suffused
with a fine Impressionist mist.
Aside from the work of masters like Pissarro, and a few
discoveries like the German Lesser Ury (1861- 1931), whose
voluptuous "Reclining Nude" (1889) is symbolic of the
radical departure from Jewish religious traditions brought
about by the 19th century, the issues highlighted in this
show are more historical and cultural than aesthetic.
Still, there are some pictures here that tap the emotions
more than lightly - and an understanding of their context,
so well explained in the catalog, enhances their impact.
``The Emergence of Jewish Artists in 19th-Century Europe''
remains at the Jewish Museum, 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd
Street, (212)423-3200, through March 17.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/11/arts/11JEWI.html?ex=1011758092&ei=1&en=cd4a94677f3dfb0d
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