ISIDOR KAUFMANN | PORTRAIT OF A RABBI

Religious Institution, and sold: Sotheby's, New York, April 25, 2006, lot 101, illustrated

Acquired at the above sale

This dignified Portrait of a Rabbi shows Kaufmann at the height of his powers.

With his slightly parted lips and direct gaze, the sitter seems about to speak. Wisdom and solemnity are exemplified in his delicately rendered face and in his direct gaze. He embodies the nobility of the elderly Jewish sage, devoted to the Torah and a Jewish way of life that was fast disappearing from the villages of Eastern Europe and Russia to which Kaufmann travelled each summer in the early 1900s.

The artist's striking portraits of these rabbinical sages are enhanced through Kaufmann's trademark use of ornamental background detail and a sumptuous palette. In this portrait, Kaufmann lavishes equal care on the clothing and background as he accords to the Rabbi’s face. He wears an imposing streimel, painted in tones of brown and mauve, and sits before a magnificent green and red Torah Ark curtain, typically inscribed with dedicatory text. His dark jacket contrasts with the tallit and splendid atara, shimmering with silver and gold thread.

This particular sitter was a favorite model of Kaufmann’s and appears in several other portraits, including Rabbi with Prayer Shawl and Kaufmann’s last unfinished painting, Of the High Priest’s Tribe (G. TobiasNatter, Rabbiner, Bocher, Talmudschüller, Bilder des Weiner Malers Isidor Kaufmann 1853-1921, exh. cat, Jüdishcen Musuem der Wien, 1995, pp. 243 and 249).

Kaufmann’s place in the history of celebrated Viennese portraiture was recognized by his inclusion in a landmark exhibition Facing the Modern: The Portrait in Vienna 1900 at the National Gallery, London (October 2013–January 2014).