Leilão Bidspirit | Samuel Hirszenberg (1865-1908) – Jewish

Samuel Hirszenberg (1865-1908) – Jewish Storekeeper at His Shop – Oil on Canvas - Jewish storekeeper at his shop. Oil on canvas. Signed, dated 1905. 42.5X51.5 cm. Frame: 63X72 cm. Relined. Samuel Hirszenberg (1865-1908) was a Jewish painter born in Łódź. He studied art in Cracow and Munich, painting landscapes, large historical illustrations and genre paintings on diverse Jewish themes. He ranks among the leading Jewish painters of the late 19th century, including Maurycy Gottlieb, Isidor Kaufmann, Leopold Horowitz and Lazar Krestin. Hirszenberg was active in Cracow from 1904, where he evidently also painted the present work. Its theme may be inspired by a painting of Jozef Israëls depicting an elderly man smoking a pipe, although the figure has been thoroughly Judaized in Hirszenberg's treatment. He immigrated to Eretz Israel in 1907, serving as a teacher at Bezalel in its early years (and was secretly a candidate to replace Boris Schatz). He donated his important work The Wandering Jew (also known as The Eternal Jew) to the Bezalel National Museum, where it was displayed as a classic expression of the Zionist ideal of national rebirth (today held in the Israel Museum Collection, item no. B04139). Hirszenberg passed away in 1908 and was buried on the Mount of Olives. According to Gidon Ofrat, Hirszenberg was immortalized as the artist Shimshon Blaukopf, a character in Agnon's novel Only Yesterday (Temol Shilshom).