Born in Stockholm to a family that had immigrated from Prussia in the late eighteenth century, Ernst Josephson settled in Paris in 1879. In his early paintings, he primarily focused on historical and biblical subjects inspired by the Old Masters. In the 1880s, influenced by Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet, his style became more realist and impressionist. Josephson became a leader of the Opponents, a Paris-based group of modernist Swedish artists who rebelled against the artistic conservatism of their native land. While suffering from mental illness during the last two decades of his life, Josephson was extremely productive in an innovative expressionist mode.
Tomb of an Israeli Soldier I was one of a series of works painted by Michail Grobman at a time when any sympathetic gesture toward Israel was, for Soviet Jews, an act of defiance. Grobman’s very style…
In 1942, Arthur Szyk produced this poster, called Tears of Rage, for a series of pageants mounted by Hollywood screenwriter Ben Hecht and militant Zionist leader Peter Bergson to protest inaction…
Drawing of a wooden synagogue from Maximilian Syrkin’s 1910 article, “Drevníya derevyannyye sinagogi v pol’she litve” (Wooden Synagogues in Polish Lithuania). Wooden synagogues were a common form of…