The son of an observant Jewish family in Groningen, Holland, Jozef Israëls became one of the foremost Dutch artists of the nineteenth century. After initially painting portraits and historical subjects, in the 1850s Israëls turned to painting genre scenes in a powerful realist style, particularly depictions of the hard lives of fishermen and their families. In the 1870s, Israëls became a leader of the Hague school and achieved international renown. Late in his career, Israëls portrayed Jewish subjects, notably The Son of an Ancient People (1889) and The Jewish Wedding (1903), as well as biblical subjects.
The Last Breath is one of the genre paintings depicting the lives of fishermen and their families for which Jozef Israëls was best known. In this scene, a woman is weeping over the body of her husband…
This fantastical picture by Florine Stettheimer melds together a biblical pastoral scene (palm trees, sheep, and women dressed in imagined Middle Eastern clothing) with a group of modern American…
The first Ashkenazi Jews to settle in Amsterdam, refugees from the Chmielnicki uprising in Poland and the Thirty Years War, initially joined the Sephardi congregation there. In 1671, they established…