Patrick Bade
Portrayal of the Jews in Western Art

Patrick Bade - Portrayal of the Jews in Western Art

- Hi, good evening, everybody, or morning or afternoon, wherever you are. I’ve got a big talk tonight that covers a lot of ground, really about a thousand years. And my task is to look at the way Jews have been perceived and depicted by artists from a Christian background. I have to say, and I took this talk with considerable trepidation. But Trudy, who’s sitting beside me, was very keen for me to do it. And you don’t say no to Trudy, really, when she’s very keen on something. And I hope she will keep me in order. So I’m grappling with some very complicated and very sensitive issues. I’m very happy for you to disagree with anything I say, and you can tell me at the end. I also have a kind of a health warning, because as you can see, from the right hand image, I’m going to be showing some very ugly and offensive images. And I’m not going to say to you, don’t be offended. Be offended, because you should be by these images. But please don’t be offended with me personally. And I also want to reassure you, as you may guess, from the very beautiful image on the left hand side, and it won’t be all horror. I’m going to show you some wonderful, very moving images. Rembrandt, Jewish Bride of course. And there’s a detail from Sargent.

Visual slides are displayed throughout the presentation.

And I think it’s interesting that so often, artists from, I won’t say Christian ‘cause I have no idea really what Sargent’s religious beliefs were. I don’t think he had any. But artists from a Christian background have often been inspired to paint some of their most profound and moving portraits of Jewish subjects. I think this is interesting. I mean, there’s a debate in that. I mean, I do have an idea, which I can give you, and you can say what you think of it. And I think it’s because artists are often inspired. They’re inspired. They’re kind of challenged by something outside the normal. And of course, over a thousand years in western culture, Jews very often, they represented the other. They weren’t the only other. There were other peoples along the way who were different. And of course, they’re wonderful, very moving portraits of all sorts of people who don’t necessarily fit into the norms of society. Now, I’m going to go back to the, I’m starting in the Middle Ages. Well, not quite actually. I’m starting with two rather Medi evil images that have come out of recent politics. I’m sure you’re all very aware that there has been a very worrying resurgence of antisemitism at the political extremes of left and right people in this country where I am, that’s United Kingdom. We’ll be aware of the outrage that was caused by this mural when it suddenly appeared on a wall in the east end of London.

And it’s really, what can I say? It’s an allegory of usury. Usury is money lending. And of course, in the Middle Ages, usury was a deadly sin. It was something that Christians could not get involved with if they didn’t want to spend the rest of eternity in hell. They were very happy for Jews to spend the rest of her eternity in hell. And that is of course why Jews in the first place were pushed into banking and finance. So this is an image of bankers enslaving the world. I think what was disturbing about the image, Jeremy Corbyn entirely failed to notice it to start with, until it was rather forcibly pointed out to him, is how several of the heads here look very like stereotypes of Jews to be found in the kind of antisemitic imagery that I’ll be looking at later in this lecture, the late 19th, early 20th century. Now, the other really jaw dropping example happened during the recent elections in America, in the runoff in Georgia when the Democratic candidate was a man called Jon Ossoff who happened to be Jewish. Now, just think about this image. Democrats are trying to buy Georgia, so it’s those Jews at it again.

And what is so outrageous about this image is the way the nose of Jon Ossoff has been digitally manipulated. In fact, in reality is 'cause he’s dropped dead handsome, he’s probably the most handsome man in politics, got sort of film star good looks. But you can see the nose has been very blatantly manipulated. And this, as he rightly said, this is a trope of antisemitism going right back to Middle Ages, where you see images of Jesus surrounded by terrible Jews with huge noses. Here’s another example from the 16th century, and that goes right through. Here are two images that date from the beginning of the 20th century. On the left, you have the very first Paris production of Götterdämmerung, or as it was called at the time. And you can see the character of Alberich, who I think most people understand is a sort of a Jewish character in The Ring. And you can see he’s been given a huge exaggerated ring. And then you can see the character of Mime, who is his brother on the right hand side in the famous Alberich illustrations to The Ring made around the same time or a little bit later, where again, the character of Mima is turned into a Jewish character, Jewish stereotype with a huge nose.

Now, Jews are pretty well invisible in the Middle Ages, except in a religious context. Probably for most people, their only image of a Jew would be entering a great church or a cathedral where at the west end of the church, you’re very likely to find statues representing ecclesia, that’s the Christian faith, and synagoga, that’s the Jewish faith. And of course, synagoga is represented blindfolded because the Jews are so blind as to fail to recognise Christ as their saviour. And you can see that the spear of synagoga is fractured and broken, showing that Christianity has triumphed over Judaism. Otherwise, in as far as we get any images of Jews, it tends to be the two myths of the blood libel, which I’m sure Trudy, you talked about this quite a bit. So about how it emerged in the 12th century in Britain. It’s one of the contributions of the British in the world that we’re not particularly proud of. The idea that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian children and used their blood for ceremonial purposes. And the other very, very bizarre myth, which was always a good excuse, when the Jews were doing too well and they’d accumulated too much money, and you need to either massacre them and drive them out of town and take all their money, you just start a rumour that Jews have purloined the host from a church and then they do all sorts of nasty things to it, stabbing it and boiling it, or anything you can think of. And such a sort of bizarre idea is those Jews have nothing better to do with their time than these arcane practises. This is a church window in Paris.

When Trudy comes to visit me, we have certain things that we like to do, certain places that we like to go. And for some, I think slightly masochistic reason, Trudy does like to go to a very, very beautiful church. I mean, I recommend going to the church anyway, Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. The list that Trudy sent you, that name is on it. So if you want to go, you can find it quite easily. It’s next to the panting on the left bank of Paris. And there’s a cloister with set of these windows that tell the story of a Jew who seduces a Christian woman, and he persuades her to steal the host. And of course, if you’re a Catholic, you believe in transubstantiation. So you actually, I remember, I find the whole idea completely creepy when I was a child and I had the first communion, and I was told very strictly by my teachers, don’t chew on it because you are chewing on Jesus’s live flash. And then in the various windows, he does all sorts of terrible things that he tries to boil it and torture it and so on. And as you can see in the central thing, when it’s boiled, it sort of leaps out of the water. And there’s a kind of popup Jesus on a crucifix, and it like a homing pigeon. And he’d been stolen from a church on the right bank and taken to a church on the left bank. And so you can imagine this vision of a little host with a popup Jesus on a crucifix bobbing along across the river sand and going like a homing pigeon back to its church. And this a miracle, this is so amazing. Let’s massacre the Jews. And so then this was actually some day that was celebrated with special masses in Paris all the way through to the 19th century. Now, on the screen now, you can see a beautiful pre-Raphaelite wardrobe that was decorated by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, or he wasn’t Sir Edward, then Edward Burne-Jones as a wedding present for his great friend, William Morris and the beautiful Jane.

And both of them were very fascinated by Chaucer’s Canterbury tales. And so he’s chosen a scene from the Canterbury Tales for this decoration, and he’s chosen The Prioress’s Tale, which is one of the most notorious examples of mediaeval anti-Semitism. In Prioress’s, she tells this story of how a Christian child that was very pious and was always singing hymns was kidnapped by the Jews and murdered. And the virgin visits him and she puts a seed on his tongue. And even though he’s had his throat slit, he continues to sing these Christian hymns. And you sort of think, “Well, why would you?” I mean, think of all the wonderful subjects there are at Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Why this one would you want to have in your bedroom? And I used to think, and I still think it was the aura of kind of mediaeval fantasy and the miraculous and so on that appealed to Burne-Jones and William Morris. And Burne-Jones and William Morris both had the reputation for being pro-Jewish. And actually, they certainly spoke up and raised funds at the time of programmes against the Jews in Russia in the late 19th century. And Burne-Jones’ wife, in her biography of him, she also stresses his love for the Jews. But having said all that, I was unbelievably disillusioned and shocked. This can happen. In the 19th, early 20th century, people that you admire and you think are wonderful, and you scratch them and suddenly, at the woodwork comes some horrible racism or antisemitism.

And a few years ago at Leighton House, they exhibited these drawing, they really shocked me. Burne-Jones was absolutely the last 19th century artist I would’ve expected to come up with caricatures like these. So that’s one thing. Of course the Jews that do get represented were the Jews of the Bible because Christianity has appropriated the Jewish Bible. But here in the biblical characters, up until, well, with the great exception of Rembrandt, up until the 19th century, they’re never shown as specifically Jewish. They’re always shown as looking very inverted commerce, Aryan, European. Again, the one exception to that being of course Moses’ horns, which as we know it, that’s a mistranslation, isn’t it, in the Bible, so Moses is shown with horns, as you can see here by, by Michelangelo. I remember reading a rather touching story about a Jewish child who was evacuated from London during a blitz and was received into a very rural family. And all the children in the family wanted to touch the head of the Jewish children to see if they actually had horns. So the Jewish Bible, as I said, is taken over by Christianity, and perhaps one of the greatest of all sets of illustrations, like a great comic strip really on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, got the creation of Adam, creation of Eve, the temptation, the expulsion, and the flood, you can all see on the screen at the moment. And here is a Adam who’s has certainly got a very beautiful nose and a very beautiful body. And there’s certainly nothing caricature about representation of the first Jew. So as I said, what do Christians do with this huge book? They wanted really to present it as a dry run for the Christian Bible, the New Testament. So Christian scholars spent an enormous amount of effort in the Middle Ages with typology. Typology is where you find an incident or a character in the Jewish Bible. And it foreshadows an incident or a character in the Christian Bible. Here you can see Moses mission was to redeem Israel from slavery to Egypt. Jesus’ mission is to redeem mankind from slavery to sin. And so you can go through all these things from the Jewish Bible that are just there as a prelude in a way to the Christian Bible.

And there’s an enormous amount of imagery in mediaeval churches that conforms to this idea of typology. Two more Moseses here on the right hand side by the 17th century French artist, Poussin. And on the left, I’ve shown you this before, ‘cause you know I love showing off my purchases, my Parisian purchases. And I think it’s a really beautiful drawing. Cost me next to nothing in Paris by 19th century academic artist. It’s obviously a preliminary drawing for an altarpiece that and is obviously also, as you can see, very derivative of Poussin but not a bad imitation. David, certain biblical characters, of course, are particularly popular. And I’ve done you a whole talk on David and why he was popular in Christian culture as representing kingship and as an excuse for having royal mistresses and also as a symbol of right triumphing over might. Jesus, again, how convenient to forget that Jesus was a Jew. Trudy might have sent me the postcard on the left hand side. And we have a tradition of trying to find the most outrageous religious postcards that we can possibly find to send to one another. But on the right hand side is a painting by Ruben’s. And you can see Jesus represented as very, very blondish northern European. Now, the great exception, of course, is Rembrandt. Rembrandt is so extraordinary in so many ways. To me, he’s just incomparable. And one would love to, well, we know quite a lot about him, but we’d love to know more. What was it that prompted him so uniquely and so far ahead of his time to recognise that Jesus was a Jew and to represent him as such? Very beautiful Semitic face. And of course Rembrandt was very religious.

He belonged to a very particular, very pious Christian sect. And from the start, he seems to be very fascinated by the Jews of Amsterdam as a way of getting closer to the Holy Book. He wanted to get to know the chosen people, 'cause he very often painted subjects from the Jewish Bible, and he wanted to make them as authentic as possible. So this is his etching of The Jewish Bride and a marvellous sketch. Oh, the bazzaz, the flourish of his head is so extraordinary in this drawing that he must have made from live from a young Jewish bride. And you can see that he’s used this when he has to paint the wedding feast of Samson. I also love you can really almost hear the conversation going on the right hand side. It’s a very Jewish conversation, very lively one with lots of gesticulation. This painting I find particularly moving of Saul and David. I’m going to show you a detail of the face. Look at that. Many of my British listeners, you’ll have been to the Wigmore Hall, and you’ll have seen a young Jewish boy, a pianist, a violinist, a cellist, completely absorbed in his music. And it’s there in this painting. I find that very moving, very, very touching. And these paintings of religious Jews, how did he get to paint them? Why did they sit for him? These are not commissioned paintings. These are not paintings that were paid for. These are paintings that he made because he wanted to make them 'cause he was interested in the people, 'cause he had felt I think a tremendous empathy for them. I doubt whether they were even saleable at the time. So he must have really wanted to do them. And I find 'em extraordinary, have an incredible quality of humanity about them. This is, again, very way, way, way ahead of its time, more than a hundred years ahead of its time. This is Dr. Efraim Bueno. This could have been a commissioned portrait. Now we know this, the name of the sitter. And there’s a etched portrait and a painted portrait. Although many people have speculated that in fact, it wasn’t a commission portrait, that it was kind of payment in kind or a thank you for medical services rendered.

Now, women. That’s where that we move into really a different mode here, the representation of biblical women. At its crudest, you could say that certain Jewish characters, female characters in the Bible, they’re only represented because an excuse to paint nudity and sexy females. So particularly, the story of Susanna, which I can’t think what possible spiritual or religious significance the story of Susanna could have, really. it’s just an excuse for dirty old men to lust after beautiful, scantily-dressed young women. And of course the story of Bathsheba and David spying on her. And it’s an excuse for voyeurism. Ruben’s on the left, Rembrandt on the right. Judith is a rather special case. I don’t think she’s officially accepted, is she, by Orthodox Jews? But it’s an apocryphal book, but she’s very important initially as to represent the heroic woman. And that’s clearly what is intended with the great Donatello statue of Judith and Holofernes. But she morphs, she changes in something else. In the 17th century, the sadistic erotic elements in the story come to the fore. And by the 19th and early 20th century, of course, she has turned into the ultimate fun, fertile, crimp-painted two versions, which you see on the right hand side here. On the left is the famous woman in gold, which is the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer. And people have suggested that actually, she was the inspiration for the Judith pictures. There is a certain facial resemblance. Now, this brings me to the topic of la belle juive. This is another Jewish stereotype. Well, I should say no, it’s a Christian stereotype of Jewish women. The idea that Jewish women are more lively, they’re more sensual, they’re more sexy and more intelligent. Now, you might say, “Hey, so what’s wrong with that as a stereotype?”

There are worse stereotypes to have. Of course, it is a double-edged thing. It’s not totally positive, but it’s a very popular stereotype in the 19th century. And probably, the book where it’s really most encapsulated, a book I strongly recommend if you’d never read, it’s an amazing book, “A Rebours,” Against Nature by Huysmans. And it doesn’t have much plot, really. It’s about a very decadent, inbred aristocrat who’s also an art collector. And there’s just a series of little incidents. One of the incidents in the book, he decides he wants to turn an innocent boy into a murderer as a social experiment. And so what he does, he picks up this boy off the street, and he takes him to one of the most expensive brothels in Paris. And he picks every, it was a cliche in the 19th century, every brothel, you had to offer different, you know, you might offer a beautiful blonde, you might offer a black woman, but you also had to have la belle juive. And she was the one who was supposed to be most skilled in the arts of love. So the hero is a sad hero, anti-hero. He chooses la belle juive to take the virginity of this boy. And then he pays for the boy to go back and avail himself her services on a regular basis. And then he cuts off the money he thinks turned the boy into a total sex addict. And then he will have to turn to crime to feed his addiction. But the other way that this book is very important for this whole nation of la belle juive is it’s this book that really establishes the cult of Salome. She’s in the New Testament. She’s a Jewish girl, but she’s in the Christian New Testament. And she comes and goes in the space of a couple of lines. She dances for Herod. He says, “What do you want?” And her mother persuades her to ask for the head of John the Baptist. That’s all we know about her. Almost nothing, really. And she is represented in Western art occasionally before the 19th century. It’s in the second half of 19th century. And it’s due to Huysmans writing these incredibly myriad, over the top descriptions of paintings by Gustav Moreau. That’s another place it’s on. I’m just looking at a poster on the wall of the Gustav Moreau that Trudy bought. It’s another place she loves to go. It’s wonderfully strange. It’s his house, of course. It’s a bit like a setting for a horror movie. And it’s absolutely full of images of Salome. There are over 90 paintings and drawings of Salome. He was totally obsessed with her. So again, around the same time or a little bit later, actually in the 1880s, when goes to tznius, and I’ve talked about this before, he wrote this wonderful, very, very vivid description of the Jewish section of tznius.

And he talks about the beauty of these incredibly live, sexy, young Jewish girls who he describes as lots of little Salomes. So it’s the idea that Jewish women have these extraordinary erotic qualities. And any exhibition you’ve been to between 1880 and say the first World War, you were sure to see lots of fantasy, male fantasy images of Salome, that Stuck on the left hand side. And Lovis Corinth on the right hand side. Now we come to probably, it’s a brief phase, but you could see antisemitism comes and goes. It’s always there, it’s always latent. It’s like a virus that can mutate. But there is a period where it looked like it might become history. And that’s the period of the enlightenment followed by romanticism. And so this is in a way the first modern. Let’s set aside Rembrandt, 'cause Rembrandt’s so special, you can’t really categorise him. But apart from Rembrandt, this is probably the first time that we have a modern Jew being painted like any other person might be painted, in presumably a commissioned portrait. I don’t know who painted this one. It’s not very good. You think, “Oh, dear, why wasn’t Rembrandt around to paint Moses Mendelssohn?” We needed somebody better than this to be painted. But he did have his portrait, of course, which was a literary portrait in the dramatic poem, Nathan der Weise by Lessing, which again was a celebration of the enlightened humanity of this great man. When he comes through to the romantic period, which in some ways is a pendulum swing against the enlightenment and it follows on, of course, they overlap, enlightenment and romanticism. Jews can also be represented in a positive way in that romantics were really romantic artists, poets and so on.

They were really into being outsiders. I think I’ve mentioned before this wonderful exhibition they had at the Royal Academy about 10 years ago called Rebels and Martyrs, which was portraits of artists or self-portrait of artists, where they show themselves as being different from society. So you get an artist like Courbet, for instance, this famous self-portrait called “Bonjour, Monsieur Courbet,” where he’s clearly presenting himself as the wandering Jew, the beard, the staff. So he is identifying himself with Jews. And it’s been pointed out that the imagery comes from popular epinal, Prince of Le Juif Errant, The Wandering Jew. And once we’re into getting on to the middle of the 19th century, the process of assimilation is well underway. And so now, yes, we do find secular portraits of celebrated Jews, the greatest actress of her generation, Rachel on the left hand side by John Etty. That’s a painting in New York City Art Gallery. And on the right hand side, a portrait of Mendelssohn who was of course immensely celebrated and famous during his lifetime. That’s by his brother Hensel. And well, of course Rothschild’s sure to turn up sooner or later. This is the portrait of Baronne de Rothschild by Ingres. And I recommend to you, you’ve got a book list I sent, or I think Trudy sent you. And there’s a very interesting essay about this painting in a book on Ingres by a writer called Carol Ockman where she analyses this portrait compared with other Ingres portraits and the sense of sensuality and seductiveness of this portrait, something I think he would be not so likely to allow himself this with a non-Jewish sitter. And so this on the right hand side, another very famous painting by Ingres. So the la belle juive fits into 19th century orientalist fantasies. And somehow, the Baronne de Rothschild with her languid pose among the cushions, you sort of feel that she belongs in a harem, like the on the right hand side. He clearly had some fantasies about her, 'cause this is a preliminary drawing of where the Baroness is shown, not topless, but bottomless.

So I think this is actually not strictly fair to accuse him of a pervy obsession with the Baroness without her clothes on, 'cause he actually did this for a lot of his female portraits. And the excuse is of course he wanted to understand what the body was doing underneath the material of the dress. Another portrait of Madame Cahen D'Anvers by Carolus-Duran, who has some of the same kind of passive sensuality. Now, you’ve probably come across it, 'cause I imagine you’ve all read “The Hare with Amber Eyes.” And she was the lover of Charles Ephrussi, and he seems to have persuaded her to choose Renoir to paint her three daughters. And this turned into a very ugly story, one way or another. And I don’t think anybody comes out of it well. Renoir certainly doesn’t, but I don’t think the Cahens d'Anvers come out of it very well either. They didn’t appreciate his work, and apparently, they didn’t want to pay him or delay paying him. And he wrote letters with very ugly anti-Semitic slurs about the Cahens d'Anvers family. Some of you may have listened into a talk, well, not a talk, an interview that I held with James McAuley, who’s written a book called “The House of Fragile Things.” And in that book, he talks a lot about the Cahens d'Anvers family, talks about a lot about the extraordinary fate of this portrait on the left hand side of Irene Cahen d'Anvers. Read the book, I’ll say, 'cause it’s a long story. You could do a whole lecture on it, really, how it was looted by the Germans and stolen by Goehring and so on and so on. And how she was actually the only member of the family who survived the Nazi Holocaust and the painting was given back to her.

And then she sold it weirdly to a Swiss arms manufacturer who supported the Nazi war effort. On the right hand side, her two sisters help the sweet younger girl. So awful to think that as an old lady, she was murdered in Auschwitz. Here’s the head. So tender and so exquisite. I think it’s one of Renoir’s most beautiful portraits. Now, this is an artist called Jules Bastien Lepage, who was very, very famous and appreciated in the 1880s and '90s. And he was obviously a go-to portraitist for successful Jews in France and painted a number. He’s a kind of forgotten figure these days. But there was a very good shirt they all say a couple of years ago. And I was really impressed by these portraits. And I think they’re not flattering. I think they have a quality of truthfulness that I think is quite remarkable. You can pair the photograph with the portrait, right? Now, Degas, oh dear, Degas. I’s so difficult, isn’t it? 'Cause as an artist, I have boundless admiration for Degas. I just think he’s so extraordinary. For me, the most interesting artist probably of the 19th century. So I could trot out the cliche. Some of his best friends were Jews. It’s true. His best friend was a Jew. He was Ludovic Halévy, a colourful character, nephew of the composer Halévy. And he was a great librettist for Offenbach. He co-wrote the librettist piece Bizet’s Carmen and so on. So he is a important cultural figure in Paris. But later, of course, there was a falling out at the time of the Dreyfus Affair, and Degas turned on his Jewish friends. But you could see even at this time, when they’re at their closest, in the portraits of Halevy, there is I think a caricatural element.

And Degas includes him as a stockbroker. And he’s standing in as a stockbroker in this painting of the Paris horse. Now, it’s in the last decade in the 19th century that a new kind of anti-Semitism appears, which is no longer based on religion. It’s based on race. And it’s based on pseudo-scientific theories and distortions of the theory of genetic theories. A whole lot of rubbish, really. And course the most notorious. And you get a huge proliferation, I mean, there’s a kind of fake Darwin. Darwin will be horrified. But his ideas were used to promote this kind of scientific, inverted commerce racism. And you get all these whole, and Trudy must have talked a lot about this with you. They’re all these periodicals that are entirely devoted to hatred of the Jews. And most notorious of all is Édouard Drumont’s “La Libre Parole,” which is full of these hateful and horrible images. And this is a woman called, oh God, it’s on my list. I can’t remember her name off the top of my head. She wrote under the name of Le Gyp, G-Y-P, but she had a multi barreled aristocratic name. She was a Countess. And on one occasion, she was interviewed and she described her profession as anti-Semite. And she wrote novels and short stories, all of which were attacking Jews, particularly the assimilation of successful wealthy Jews into the upper echelons of French society. This is a book called “Les Gens Chics.” And it’s mocking Jews who want to marry into the aristocracy and behave like French aristocrats. Now, we get to the picture postcard. The golden age of picture postcards is really between 1819, 1914. Millions, tens of millions of postcards were sent to one. You only have to go to any flea market in Europe, and you can find mountains and mountains, and mountain of these postcards. Everybody was sending postcards to each other all the time. Sometimes, they were holiday destinations. Very often, they were a popular performance. There’s a whole sub genre of anti-Semitic cards like these. And you find them everywhere. They’re in North America, they’re all over Europe. They’re in Britain, in France, in Russia. You think, didn’t these people have something better to do with their time and their money?

Go out and buy a postage stamp, and one of these hideous cards to show how much you hate the Jews. I’m going to go through them fairly quickly, 'cause it’s not really a pleasant thing to go along, but the quantities of these things is just absolutely extraordinary. This one might interest you 'cause it’s a South African one. Some of you, anyway. Those of you are in South Africa. And it shows the arrival of a presumably Latin or Lithuanian immigrants in Cape Town. And actually, I’m just going to move on. Now, I’m going to finish by muddying the waters, because I want to look at two artists who one would describe as philo-Semites. They’re both artists who obviously felt very comfortable with Jews and liked them and counted many Jews among their patrons. But in both cases, their depictions of Jews could be seen as incorporating caricatural and stereotypical elements. And I’m not sure what I think about this. I’d quite like to know what you think about it. On the left is John Singer Sargent, his self-portrait. And on the right is Otto Dix. So Sargent at the time, a very high proportion of his clients were Jews. And this was remarked upon and he was sometimes attacked and criticised for it. People said, “Oh, he’s chasing money. He’s selling himself. Why does he always have to paint these Jews?” And he defended himself. And he said, “Well, people asked me why I paint so many Jews is I like painting them, because they have very mobile facial expressions.” And I would say this is very true, particularly in contrast. If most of your subjects are upper class English people, upper class English people are trained from birth to disguise or hold back their emotion. And so I think for somebody like Sargent who had an incredible gift for capturing mobile expressions, Jews were really something wonderful for him.

Look at these two children, the slightly wary expressions, the Meyer children. This is actually not a Jewish subject. I’m just showing you this 'cause it shows these very special qualities Sargent has. And actually, I love Sargent, but if I could choose any painting by him, I would choose this. And it’s a portrait of a woman writer who, her real name was Violet Paget, but she was a transvestite and a lesbian. And she published her writings under the male name of Vernon Lee. So I’m choosing as part 'cause it reinforces my theory that otherness, it can be a challenge and inspiration to an artist. And it’s interesting how as well as painting lots of wonderful paintings of Jews, Sargent also painted many wonderful paintings of people of fluid gender. They obviously interested him, and he could empathise with them. And I think probably, he was, well, he was very likely, I think, that he was homosexual himself. He was certainly also an outsider, because he was born to American parents. He was born in Florence. He never really had any roots anywhere. He was brought up trilingual, Italian, French, wandering constantly. He never married. So he is the ultimate example of the rootless cosmopolitan. And I could see why, again, immediately, he felt an affinity and he felt comfortable with Jews. But anyway, I show you this portrait, which was painted in a matter of a couple of hours. And she described how it was put. They were having a really intense, lively conversation. She never sat still for that portrait for one second. And every now and then, he would leap up and rush the piano and start playing something on the piano. And then he’d come back again. And then, after a couple of the hours, it’s wet and wet. My God, the virtuosity, the control of that is so fantastic. And to show off that it’s all wet painting and all done in one go, you can see he signed it by taking something sharp, like shown in the detail there. And he’s written, “To my friend, Violet.”

He’s just written through the wet paint on the surface. Now, the largest group of portraits that Sargent ever painted in one family was the Wertheimer family. And altogether, he painted 9, no, 12 portraits actually. The nine of them are now in the gallery. This is Asher Wertheimer who was a very successful Bond Street art dealer selling to the Rothchilds and so on. So between the end of the '90s and 1907, almost every year, there would be a Wertheimer family member portrayed by Sargent at the Royal Academy. And they were always much commented on. So it was a huge investment for Wertheimer to do this. But you could say a bit like the sachis that he was using art to promote himself. On the other hand, if you actually read the reviews, some of them are truly horrific. You think, why did he want to subject himself and his family to this kind of racial abuse? The sort of things that critics would say, literally they’d say, “Sargent has exhibited a brilliant portrait this year of a loathsome racial type.” That’s the sort of thing that appeared in The Times in the early 1900. Now, Sargent got on really, really well with the Wertheimer as he was practically a family member. He stayed with them very often. Here, you’ve got a portrait compared to photograph, how much more alive the portrait is than the photograph. Now, what kind of a man is this? It’s not all together a flattering portrait, is it? He looks pretty tricky. And again, you’ve got some of, he’s some of almost the caricatural features that you find in antisemitic images, the phallic cigar, the bulk of the man and so on. I mean, he looks like a fat capitalist. And you’ve got antisemitic caricature on the left, and a George Gross on the right. And the wet lips and the dog with its tongue, his wet tongue hanging out and the dog, 'cause he’s wearing black and the dog is black, the dog is an extension of him. It’s part of him. And this is his daughter, one of the daughters, Helena.

And here you can see Sargent very much conforming to the stereotype of the belle juive. And she seems to be in some kind of haring. And that’s an Ingres for comparison on the right hand side. And the two sisters, Betty and Ena. Ena on the right hand side was his favourite. And she was probably his closest friend over many years. I think this was the portrait where that the comment was made about it being a faithful portrait of a loathsome racial type. And I’d like to make this comparison of a very fine portrait by Millais on the right hand side of unfortunately named Hoare sisters. But oh, my goodness, don’t they look uptight? Don’t they look prim? Which one of these pairs of sisters would you like to sit down to supper with on a Friday night? I think you’d have more fun with the Wertheimer sisters. Of course, there’s this idea of the sensuality, the amount of flesh they’re exposing, and they’re kind of sexy. But they’re not guarded like the Hoare sisters. They’re really offering themselves too psychologically as well almost physically. Now, what I will say in Sargent’s defence is that this is not something he just does with the caricatural element. It’s not something you just find in the Jewish portraits. You find it in all his best portraits.

And I would say I’d like to put forward the idea that actually, caricature is an essential element in any great portrait. So here we’ve got, and you could say, I think these are two fantastic portraits of one of the Jewish plutocrat and one of a British aristocrat. I mean, look at that face of Lord Dalhousie on the right hand side. Oh, my God. I don’t know if Anke’s listening to this tonight. She’s my colleague. She was my colleague at Christies for many, many years. But I’m quite sure she will have seen many faces like that in Christies showrooms. That it’s such an incredible analysis of a certain type of English aristocrat, the nonchalance, the arrogance, but a certain unease. And so it makes a wonderful contrast I think with . Now, this is a portrait by Otto Dix of a Jewish art dealer, Flechtheim. His name was Flechtheim. Incidentally, his name has come up recently because, well, in 1933 of course, he was forced to flee from Germany and his collection, his stock was appropriated. And some of it turned up, you may have read those stories about a dealer called Gurlitt. And it was discovered that he was hoarding an incredible collection of modern art in his flat in Munich. And quite a lot of it actually came from a Alfred Flechtheim. So this is Otto Dix. So what do you think of this? You got the comparison with the photograph. Is this a cruel caricature? Is it antisemitic? Again, I would make the point that Otto Dix of all artists is an artist with a very strong sense of caricature in his work and exaggeration. And you didn’t have to be Jewish to bring that out in him. This is his most famous picture, which you all know from the opening scene of, what’s the movie in Berlin?

Cabaret, yes. So I mean, the Cabaret starts with this image, and this is the lesbian journalist Sylvia von Harden. And again, you see even photograph. She was actually rather a beautiful woman. She wasn’t quite the ghoul that Otto Dix has made her. She wasn’t Jewish. So there’s certainly no anti-Semitic element in that. But this is one of his best patrons, a lawyer called Dr. Fritz Glaser, who was a very wealthy lawyer in Dresden and adored Otto Dix’s work and commissioned portraits of them. So ask us, would you be brave enough actually to commission an artist to paint your portrait who painted like this? Anyway, this is where I’m going to come to an end and see, I’m going to come out of the stop share, out of the share and see, oh, should I just go into the questions? Lots of questions.

Q&A and Comments:

• Yes, please.

• I did an MA on the Dreyfus about four years ago. Surely, that was the pinnacle of, yes indeed, it was the pinnacle of antisemitic cartoons in France. But it wasn’t just in France. It was in Russia, it was in Poland, it was in America, it was in Britain.

Q: Jesus was a Jew. Was he ever depicted with a big nose or other?

A: Well, yes, I think you can, I don’t know about big nose, but I think it’s the Rembrandt. As I said, he definitely paints Jesus as a Jew. Ironically really, the most Jewish subject in painting has to be Jesus. He was really a Jew, yes.

Q: What was the host?

A: Yes, the host is the biscuit that you take for when you have to take communion.

Q: Why do paintings of naked baby Jesus never show him circumcised?

A: Yeah, well, that’s interesting. It’s probably 'cause Christians don’t circumcise, and again, it’s a failure to acknowledge his Jewishness.

Oh, somebody’s corrected me. Thank you. Appropriately called Naomi Frome. Adam was the first person. Was not Jewish. Abraham was the first Jew. I’m not quite sure I understand the distinction, but I’ll look it up. Thanks, somebody else has made the same point.

Horns and rays, both definitions from the same Hebrew root word. That is the era that was made. Our Bible says rays shone on his head, which is actually interestingly how it’s depicted in my drawing.

Q: Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam where there were many Jews, so he knew what they looked like. Is it possible that artists in other countries in early times did not?

A: Yeah, some. I don’t think that is the reason why. I don’t think that explained Rembrandt’s interest in Jews, 'cause obviously, there were plenty of other artists in Amsterdam who didn’t paint Jews. And there were certainly places where people had never seen a Jew and didn’t know what the Jew looked like. But on the other hand, there were Jewish communities in many European cities. It was forbidden in the Jewish religion to paint a face as it was the 10 commandments of no grave, yes. So that is why I said it’d be so interesting to know more about the circumstances of those Rembrandt portraits of very religious Jews. À rebours, in English, the title is usually against the grain, but it’s not actually a translation, very good translation of À rebours. A saying I heard years ago, how odd of God to choose the Jews, but not as odd as those who choose a Jewish God to spur the Jews, yes?

What about the huge nose of the character in the current Israeli… I don’t know it, sorry. I can’t comment on that.

Q: Didn’t Rembrandt have his studio in the Jewish?

A: Yes, he did.

Q: Could he have known Spinoza? Do you know? I’ve got Trudy right next to me. I’m asking her.

A: [Trudy] Give me his dates complete.

• Rembrandt is 1606 to 1669. I don’t know Spinoza’s.

• [Trudy] But he could have known, but he probably knew, he knew Menasseh Ben Israel. He knew a lot of the scholarship, yes.

• Yes, he knew a lot of the scholarship. It’s possible.

Q: Do you think it’s possible that Rembrandt knew, yes. Yes, that Rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel?

A: Definitely.

• Yes, he did.

Q: There’s a portrait, isn’t there? An etching. Atara, what is the name of the book about the painting of the Renoir girl? It’s the House of Fragile Things. It’s not all about her, but it plays a big role in that book.

A: Yes, it’s in the Bührle collection in Zurich, which is a fantastic collection. And he was a horrible, horrible man. Degas was close to the Hecht brothers, Jewish rubber merchants, collectors and patrons of the opera. In America, there were postcards showing a lynching of African Americans. They also showed the crowds having a great time. That’s true.

Q: What is the map behind me?

A: Do you know, I don’t know. I’m not in my own house, I’m afraid.

Q: Where can we see the Rembrandt painting of Orthodox Jews, please?

A: Well, I know there’s one in Berlin. I can’t actually think off the top of my head. It shouldn’t be hard to find that.

Q: What do you think of the work of Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer?

A: I like his work very, very much indeed, particularly the pastels. I think they’re exquisite.

Another frequent representation, Jews in mediaeval art and beyond is in Dress. The pointed hat, yellow or white circular badge on the clothing, the so-called rota, a precursor of the yellow star badge in the 20th century.

Book list you mentioned, you should receive, it’s a list of the images and the names and several books relevant to this lecture. You should have received it, I think, with the invitation to Meyer children.

Boy, Frank is my grandfather. Oh, wonderful. Lots more about this in my forthcoming book on their mother whose arm you showed. Oh, thank you very much. Oh, Tessa, thank you so much. I love it when we get these connections.

The book I mentioned is not specifically about Renoir. It is about the discoloration of French Jewish collections, and it’s called the House of Fragile Things.

Q: Was the mural you shared at the beginning of the talk removed?

A: Yes, it has been removed, hasn’t it? Yes, quite rightly too.

Somebody’s thanking me for the memoirs of, mentioning the memoirs of… Fantastic book. Glad you enjoyed it.

The portrait of the British Aristocrat who had a whopper of a nose. You mean, the one I compared? That is Lord Dalhousie, who’s Scottish, I think.

Dix and the artists in the I think did use caricature in their art such as Karl Huber. No, I don’t think. I was putting it to you, really? I was just saying, seeing out of context, you could look at those pictures and thinking they’re antisemitic, but I don’t think they are, and I think you’re right.

Yes, Bührle collection.

Time wise, somebody’s saying Rembrandt could have known Spinoza.

Yes, that’s a very good book. “Rembrandt’s Jews” by Steven Nadler, somebody mentions.

Right. Rembrandt’s neighbour and friend, Rabbi Ben Menasseh provides him with the Hebrew writing of Belshazzar’s Feast painting. How can we know that, actually? Well, it’s probably in the book we just mentioned.

• [Wendy] Patrick?

• Yeah?

• [Wendy] Hi, Patrick. Hi, it’s me. I’d just like to jump in and say thank you for an excellent, excellent presentation. We’re going to have to end now because we have another presentation on the vaccine in half an hour.

• Good, right. Thank you, Wendy.

• [Wendy] Thanks a million. For those of you who want to join us in half an hour, we having a discussion on the vaccine and the different vaccines. And to you, Patrick, thank you for an outstanding presentation so much. There’s so much more, right?

• Yes, yes, indeed.

• [Wendy] Yeah, I’m looking forward to exploring.

• [Patrick] Thank you, Wendy. Thank you, everybody.

• Take care everyone. Bye-Bye.