On My Mind: Maurycy (Moses) Gottlieb - A Great Polish-Jewish Painter (1856-1879)

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April 19, 1996 - The first Jewish painter of world renown to emerge from Poland was the young artist Maurycy (Moses) Gottlieb, a tragic and torn figure who oscillated between his Polish background and the deep Jewish traditions in which he was reared. In his short life he managed to produce an amazingly large number of paintings. At a recent exhibition of his works in Israel, more than 200 paintings were on display.

Gottlieb was born February 21, 1856, in Drohobycz, a small town at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains in southern Poland which also produced other outstanding artists, including Ephraim Lilien (se my "On My Mind" column on Ex Libris on February 2). His parents kept a traditional Jewish home, which was also open to Haskalah (Enlightenment) ideas. Gottlieb's talents as an artist were soon discovered, and already, at the age of 13, he was sent to Lemberg to study painting. In 1871 his father took him to Vienna Art Academy. He came under the influence of patriotic Polish painters, including the famous Jan Matejko, who remained an influence on Gottlieb's art. Another influence was Rembrandt. Gottlieb's familiarity with Rembrandt's painting technique influenced many of his works. In fact some of them, including his self-portraits and portraits of members of his family, could almost have been painted by the Dutch master, who lived 200 years before Gottlieb.

At this stage in his life Gottlieb painted works on patriotic Polish themes. However, after experiencing a constant stream of anti-Semitic excesses, a change took place in him in 1876, when he arrived in Munich for advanced studies. It was in Munich that Gottlieb read the History of the Jews by the famous German-Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz. Gottlieb now began painting works on biblical and Jewish themes which, through the balance of his short life, characterized his career. It was then that he painted "The Merchant of Venice," "A Jewish Wedding," and illustrations for the play by Lessing, Nathan the Wise, a work of the German Emancipation period which supported civil freedom for the Jews. There followed also many paintings on biblical themes.

This is how one art critic explained Gottlieb's infatuation with Lessing's Nathan the Wise:

Lessing's humanist philosophy was well in line with the ideals propounded by Gottlieb, a child of the Jewish Enlightenment in 19th century Galacia. In 1876, the year before he began work on "Nathan the Wise," the themes of Gottlieb's paintings had undergone a change from subjects drawn from Polish history to Jewish themes. The hero of Lessing's play, Nathan, is a condemned to live out his Jewish destiny; and, like Gottlieb himself, must bear the brunt of anti-Semitism. His family is murdered in Christian riots during the Crusades; the Christian Patriarch of Jerusalem addresses anti-Semitic remarks to him; and the Sultan forces a religious debate on him in order to coerce him into loaning him money.

Gottlieb also painted a portrait of Uriel d'Acosta, the tragic Dutch-Jewish philosopher of the 17th century. The painting, "Uriel d'Acosta in the Synagogue," shows the scene of d'Acosta's renunciation for his heretic writings. D'Acosta is seen barefoot, beating his breast, while the rabbi, wrapped in a Tallit, stands by. Gottlieb also painted Judith of the Apocrypha, in which the Jewish heroine is shown with the severed head of Holofernes, the Greek oppressor of the Jews. Another Jewish heroine is shown in Gottlieb's painting "Ivanhoe" based on the book by Sir Walter Scott. This painting shows the Jewess Rebecca and the Saxon noble, Richard the Lion-Hearted, who defended the Jewish girl.

Gottlieb produced one of the most impressive of all of his paintings one year before his death: "Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur," a huge painting measuring 2 1/2 by 2 meters. The painter shows himself in the center of the group of several Jewish men and women, many of them his relatives. The spirit of Yom Kippur, with its sanctity and peacefulness, reflected on all of their faces.

A bearded man in the center wearing a shtreimel and holding a Sefer Torah in his arms -- probably Gottlieb's father -- is most significant because the mantle of the Torah bears Gottlieb's Hebrew name -- and death date! The Hebrew text embroidered on the mantle reads: "Donated in memory of the late honored teacher and rabbi, Moshe Gottlieb of blessed memory, 1878." He painted this while he was still alive and must have had a premonition of early death. On his way back to Cracow, where he had spent much of his life, he caught a throat infection and died a few days later. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Cracow.

With all the cultural and social conflicts he had lived through, he found his Jewish roots. At the young age of 24 he had experienced artistic fulfillment in the Jewish tradition and the Bible. His dream of freedom for the Jewish people in Poland was, of course, misguided; the Poland of the Holocaust proved that. But his long-term dream of salvation for the Jewish people and vindication of Judaism was felt in our generation. The renewed interest in Gottlieb's life and art is most timely. His loyalty to Judaism and the Jewish people and his artistic brilliance deserve that we respect and honor his memory.

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