Facing History: Portraits from the LBI Art Collection

Mother & Daughter Portrait — Artist unknown. Unidentified mother and daughter. Germany, mid-19th century. These portraits of a mother and daughter show the cultural dynamics in a German-Jewish family of the mid-19th century. The mother’s dress adheres to traditional conventions of modesty, including a bonnet and possibly a Sheitel to cover her hair, while the daughter confidently wears her natural hair in ringlets and sports a low-cut dress that emphasizes her décolletage and jewelry. LBI Art & Objects Collection, 77.59a and 77.59b.

Franz Joseph Kisling, Portrait of Abraham Ettlinger, 1802. The artist Franz Joseph Kisling was the official court portraitist of Mannheim. The tricorner hat worn by the sitter was typical for Jewish men at the time. LBI Art & Objects Collection, 78.50.

Gertrud Sax-Bernhard, Portrait of Georg Bernhard, c. 1920s. The sitter, painted by his wife, was a financial journalist and the publisher and editor of the *Vossische Zeitung*. LBI Art & Objects Collection, 77.51.

Artist Unknown, Man with a Pipe, c. 1820. This typical Biedermeier portrait offers little to identify the sitter as Jewish, other than a Hebrew volume of Tehillim, the Book of Psalms. LBI Art & Objects Collection, 2001.5.

Adolf Ziegler, Portrait of Erich and Alice Wronker, 1920s. These two children of an upper middle class German-Jewish family were painted by Adolf Ziegler, an artist who eventually became one of Hitler's favorite painters. Josef Goebbels appointed him president of the Nazi Chamber of Art in 1936. LBI Art & Objects Collection, 2003.27.

Portrait of Rose Susan Hirschhorn Behrend — Joseph Margulies, Portrait of Rose Susan Hirschhorn, 1940. Joseph Margulies was a highly awarded American painter, etcher and lithographer. He came to the United States from Austria at an early age. He studied first under the great master of lithography and etching, Joseph Pennell (1857-1926) at the Art Students’ League in New York from 1922 to 1925. Margulies then continued his artistic education at the National Academy of Design and at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. He then completed an apprenticeship with Maynard Waltner in Vienna. For the following five decades Margulies established himself as perhaps the greatest portrait artist in America and was commissioned to execute the portraits of presidents and other distinguished individuals. Rose Susan Hirschhorn Behrend was the daughter of Fred Hirschhorn, founder of the General Cigar Company (known today as the Culbro Corporation). LBI Art & Objects Collection, 2005.93.

Portrait of Richard Koch as a Child with Toy Elephant — Louise Lyons Heustis. Portrait of a Boy with an Elephant, 1925. Louis Lyons Heustis was a portrait painter and illustrator, exhibited widely in the United States. Born in Mobile, Alabama she studied at the Art Students League in New York, the Academie Julian in Paris, as well as in Philadelphia, Switzerland, and Italy with a number of artists. Many of Heustis' portraits and illustrations were featured in magazines such as Harper and Brothers, Charles Scribner's Sons, and The Century Company. She also painted historic sites and designed posters. She died in 1851 in New York. LBI Art & Objects Collection, 2009.017.

Phillip Erlanger Self-Portrait — Phillip Erlanger, Self-portrait, 1912. Phillip Erlanger, born 1870 in Frankfurt, was a sculptor and painter. His father was a Jewish wine dealer. He studied at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut from 1887–1890, then continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich from 1894–1898. From 1899 to 1914 he was active in Breslau. He died in 1934 in Braunschweig. LBI Art & Objects Collection, 77.35.

A. Heine, Portrait of a Rabbi, c. 1860 — A. Heine, Portrait of a Rabbi, between 1867 and 1899. LBI Art & Objects Collection, 2006.3.

Dates: Thu, Jul 31, 2014 – Sun, Oct 26, 2014
Venue: Katherine and Clifford H. Goldsmith Gallery (map)
Center for Jewish History
15 West 16th Street
New York, NY 10011 U.S.A.

At the core of LBI’s Art Collection are well over 1,000 portraits of Jews from Central Europe that reflect the changing cultural dynamics from the 18th century to the 20th century. A selection of some of the most interesting portraits is on display in the Katherine and Clifford H. Goldsmith Gallery at the Center for Jewish History this summer.

Portrait painting has always been linked with ethnic and national identity. Jews, however, observing the commandment against graven images, traditionally refrained from having their likeness painted. This reluctance was reinforced by the absence of Jewish artists. Barred from the artistic guilds, Jews first became involved in the visual arts only in the 19th century.

The pictorial representation that developed became particularly significant because many Christians used these images as their only reference to Jews. Social restrictions limited direct contact, which meant Christians rarely had an opportunity to meet a Jew in person.

The rapid spread of portraiture among German Jews was spurred by the veneration many congregants felt for their rabbis, whose portraits became much desired icons. Later, as Jews established themselves in the middle class, they wanted their importance as individuals recognized and immortalized for posterity. Portraiture thus became a social agent that not only conveyed a public image of Jews, but also served as an expression of their self-awareness and affirmed their status to other Jews.

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