Isidor Kaufmann's contemporary genre scenes in Vienna: 1880s and 90s

Art historians often cite rabbinical rulings against all Jewish art in the Middle Ages. But any such restrictions were limited to the geog­raph­­ic community where each ruling was given!! And in any case, they were no longer applicable by the C19th. Even better, national art schools and academies formally opened their doors to Jewish students in the C19th, in Britain, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Romania etc.

Talented Jewish artists emerged. Moritz Oppenheim (1800-82), Solomon Hart (1806–81), Jozef Israels (1824–1911), Alphonse Levy (1843-1918), Maurycy Gottlieb (1856-79), Solomon J Solomon (1860–1927), Samuel Hirszenberg (1865-1908), Boris Schatz (1867-1932) and Ephraim Lilien (1874–1925) were certainly creating worthy careers for them­selves. Max Liebermann (1847-1935) was regarded as a pioneer of modern artistic dev­elopment.

But in my opinion, the most import­ant of all C19th Jewish art­ists was Hungarian-born Is­­idor Kaufmann (1853-1921). Young Kaufmann studied at the professional art academy of Bu­d­apest, and Vienna, for a total of 5 years. Then he married a synagogue cantor's daug­hter in 1882, and had 5 child­ren. This was a painter who knew the outside art world but who was also very much a part of the large, traditional Jew­ish community in Vien­na.

The question to ask is: could Kaufmann and these other young Jewish artists join the modern art world or would they be limited to de­p­icting religious events, Biblical characters and rabbis’ portraits? Richard Cohen in “Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe” said that Kaufmann was less concerned than Moritz Oppenheim with encompassing the Jewish holidays, but more involved in uncov­er­ing the inner spirit of the Eastern European Jews in their daily life. I want to test Cohen’s view.

Kaufmann, The Chess Player

 Sotheby's New York, 23rd June 1983, 

26 x 21 cm 

From the mid 1880s, Kaufmann began produc­ing detailed ge­n­re paint­ings i.e subjects from everyday life. Luckily he was an excel­lent draughts­man and colourist. There paintings were very small in size and in sub­ject mat­t­er, but then genre paint­ing only has domesticity & honesty going for it. The paintings were set in cold, bare and totally un-idyllic contexts, but with lots of pleas­ure coming from friendship, family closeness or religious studies. And the details of a family home were painted with the same meticul­ousness that we might have expected from Ver­­m­eer, con­cent­ra­ting on the archit­ect­ural detail of rooms and on the psychological auth­en­ticity of his mod­els. Not much politicising.

The Chess Player sat on a bare chair in a room of bare grey walls, his red nose, heavy coat and top hat suggesting the space's cold. But the cold didn’t matter. Intellectual pursuits were more important that fine furnishings: books remained open on a table, ready to be read again, once the chess strategies had been decided.

The Chess Pl­ay­ers (c1886, not shown) there were two ordinary workers, friends sit­ting down to a quiet game at home. Their clothes were a very ordinary and they apparently couldn't afford to put even a rug on the fl­oor, but the men were enjoying the contest and tak­ing it very ser­ious­ly. We assume that each chess decision was carefully considered, be­f­ore each move was made.

Kaufmann, Chess Problems

c1889, 31 x 40 cm

Chess Problems dealt with a similar event, but this time the two men were considerably better dressed and the room was furnished with comfort and with style. While the compos­ition of this paint­ing was similar to the composition of The Ch­ess Pl­ayers, and the attention they paid to the game was sim­ilar, were the bare headed men were not Jewish? Presumbly it would not have mattered, in Vienna's contemporary world.

Kaufmann, Two Pairs of Shoes

c1889, 38 x 31 cm

In Two Pairs of Shoes, an elderly Jewish man was shown assessing his stock from his table top. Perhaps business was going well enough; there seemed to have been a quiet smile on his face, and a satisfying cigaret­te in his hand. Clothes and shoes were heaped everywh­ere, in the suit case, on top of the table and over the screen. Note the attention paid to the books, clock and vase in the back of the room. 

Kaufmann, Commerical Instruction 

1890-1, 40 x 31 cm

private collection 

Commercial Instruction used a title similar to Business Secret but was more tender. Using the same furn­i­t­ure and lights as The Rabbi's Visit, this painting told the story of a religious father and son spending time together. However instead of bonding over religious studies, this father was teaching his son about business. The lesson must have been appealing because the little boy was fascinated.

Kaufmann, Business Secret 

c1894, 33 x 28 cm

In Isidor Kaufmann by G Tobias Natter (1995) I found 11 small, wonderful genre scenes painted 1884-95. Two Pairs of Shoes, The Chess Players, No Fool Like An OldFool, Chess Pro­blems, Rabbi's Visit, Business Secret, Com­merc­ial Inst­r­uct­ion, A Business Transaction etc were all pain­ted in the corner of a lounge room, usually with one or two fig­ures. In this short per­iod, Kauf­mann st­ruck a gold mine, as it were. He creat­ed detailed, finished and pain­terly works, about small issues. Pl­easure, religious or secular, was depic­ted.

Business Secret showed two poorly dressed men talking conf­identially about secondhand items for sale. A third man poked his head through the window, possibly eaves­dropping on the deal. By stres­sing the shabby hawk­ers with blatantly Jewish features, Natter suggested this painting verged on the cartoonish. But I think it was painted very much in the same tender vein as the others.

Consider the many C19th Jewish artists who operated outside both old Rabbinic tradition and stark, secular modernism. In the suddenly mobile, changing world of the latter C19th, how could Jewish artists come to terms with their own identities and approach the task of represent­ation? Appropriately The Emergence of Jewish Artists in C19th Europe, at Jewish Museum NY 2001, presented 21 painters who offered radically different responses to this complex question. The book by Susan Tumarkian Goodman ed (2001) is excellent. 

McBee suggested Jewish artists like Kaufmann were able to address a broad public at last; they were interested in representing Jewish life and showing it on a par with Chris­tian life. Their art documenting everyday life was shaped by the community and changed by modernity, so it had to do a balancing act between emancipation and assimilation. Kauf­mann reminded the modern viewer that Jewish art was a changing and vital aspect of cultural iden­t­ity.

  

Kaufmann, Rabbi with a Young Student, 
53 x 68 cm, 
Sotherby's New York, 19th Dec 2012 

Then something changed for Kaufmann. Viennese genre scen­es no longer satisfied the need to discover his vibrant Jew­ish roots. In the later 1890s, he went in search of mat­erial in Jewish towns across the Austro-Hun­g­ar­ian Em­pire and Po­land. He travelled every summer and returned to his Vienna studio to turn the sketches into completed paintings.

A work from this later era was Rabbi with A Young Student. Kaufmann reflected the pride he felt for the traditional religious life. The teacher displayed a sense of solemnity and perhaps wisdom. The young student was caught in a moment of rapt attention, his eyes focused on the text before him. Learning was clearly the hallmark of traditional Jewish life. The walls were plain but the book case was filled with beautiful leather bound volumes.