This article from NYTimes.com has been sent to you by [log in to unmask] /-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\ Share the spirit with a gift from Starbucks. Our coffee brewers & espresso machines at special holiday prices. http://www.starbucks.com/shop/subcategory.asp?category_name=Sale/Clearance&ci=274&cookie_test=1 \----------------------------------------------------------/ 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 HOW TO ADVERTISE --------------------------------- For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters or other creative advertising opportunities with The New York Times on the Web, please contact Alyson Racer at [log in to unmask] or visit our online media kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo For general information about NYTimes.com, write to [log in to unmask] Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . 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