[57486] Manchester Art Gallery : Reading the Book of Esther

Manchester Art Gallery.

Reading the Book of Esther.

By Sir William Rothenstein (1872-1945).

Oil on canvas, 1907.

 

Religious scene depicting a group of Rabbis standing at a lectern covered in a woven cloth, reading from the book of Esther. Two men stand to the right, leaning close over the book and a third older man stands to the left side; all three have long beards and wear skull caps with capes draped over their heads. The Rabbi's stand in a room inside a Synagogue with just a wooden door visible in the background.

 

Although Rothenstein himself was Jewish he did not pay much attention to his faith until 1903 when he took a studio in Spital Square, Whitechapel, at the centre of the Jewish community in East London. Fascinated by the religious rituals, yet unable to paint in the synagogue due to Jewish law, Rothenstein hired old men in prayer shawls to pose for him in his studio. In 1905 the British Government passed the ‘Aliens Act’, which for the first time restricted immigration. The law made it possible to deny entry to all ‘undesirable’ migrants, but was widely seen as aimed principally at Eastern European Jews. The artist’s declared ambition was to convey ‘the spirit of Israel that animates the worshippers, not the outward trappings of the ritual’. This aim to see beyond surface, whether successfully fulfilled or not, shows Rothenstein’s essential humanity.

 

William Rothenstein was born into a German-Jewish family in Bradford on 29 January 1872. He studied for a year at the Slade School, where he was taught by Alphonse Legros. He then went on to study at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he was encouraged by James McNeill Whistler, Edgar Degas and Lucien Pissarro. During the 1890s, he exhibited with the New English Art Club, he was influenced by impressionism and mainly specialized in portraits and landscapes. He was interested in painting famous individuals and published several sets of lithographs of famous men of the time.

 

He became an Official War Artist for both the First and Second World War. In his later career he was better known as a teacher than a painter. He became Professor of Civic Art, University of Sheffield in 1917, before becoming principal of the Royal College of Art in 1920 until 1935, where he taught artists including Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore and Paul Nash. He died on 14 February 1945.

Done