The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, presents an exhibition exploring the work of fourteen pioneering Jewish artists living in 19th-century Europe. Each of these artists, representing the first and second generations of Jews to enter the art world previously closed to them, straddled the fine line between maintaining their Jewish origins while pursuing a field in which they depicted nudes and even Christian subjects for their patrons. Making an Entrance: Jewish Artists in 19th-Century Europe also challenges the long-held premise that the “first Jewish artist” was Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, protégée of the Rothschild family, and presents the works of the lesser-known artists Salomon Pinhas from Kassel and Jacob Liepmann from Berlin, who worked in Germany at the very beginning of the 19th century.

Making an Entrance features 40 paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures by artists such as Mark Antokolsky, Vico d’Ancona, Maurycy Gottlieb, Jozef Israëls, Isidor Kaufmann, Isaac I. Levitan, and Charlotte von Rothschild, drawn from the Museum’s collection and from private collections, many of which have been rarely seen by the public. Highlights include
Pinhas’ 1808 portraits of “Father of Reform Judaism” Israel Jacobson and his wife Mink Samson-Jacobson, d’Ancona’s Sleeping Nude (1860s), Oppenheim’s The Return of The Jewish Volunteer from the Army to his Family (1834), and Gottlieb’s Jesus in Front of his Judges (1877-1879).

Beginning in the nineteenth century, artistically talented young Jews sought to enter a world closed to their predecessors where they could channel their creativity toward painting and not limit themselves to the crafting of objects with a religious function. This meant challenging the ancient prohibition against graven images and often, by extension, even abandoning the orthodox community and its way of life. By mid-century, more Jewish painters felt free to depict a broad range of subjects, some of which were considered daring by Jewish standards, such as female nudes, and Christian themes and provocative events from Jewish history. Others produced work on traditional Jewish subjects while also exploring political themes, such as Oppenheim’s depiction of Otto von Bismarck’s fictional visit to the Vatican. By the end of the century, having achieved recognition within European culture, some Jewish artists returned to their roots, as it were, and devoted themselves to nostalgic portrayals of Jewish types of the shtetl – a visual record of what they feared might be a vanishing way of life.

Making an Entrance is on view from September 10, 2013 through July 15, 2014 and is curated by Shlomit Steinberg, Hans Dichand Curator of European Art.

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem
The Israel Museum is the largest cultural institution in the State of Israel and is ranked among the leading art and archaeology museums in the world. Founded in 1965, the Museum houses encyclopedic collections ranging from prehistory through contemporary art, including the most extensive holdings of Biblical and Holy Land archaeology in the world, among them the Dead Sea Scrolls. In just under 50 years, the Museum has built a far-ranging collection of nearly 500,000 objects through an unparalleled legacy of gifts and support from its circle of patrons worldwide. The Museum also organizes programming at its off-site locations in Jerusalem at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum, where it presents archaeological artifacts from the Land of Israel, and at its historic Ticho House in downtown Jerusalem, a venue for exhibitions of contemporary Israeli art.

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