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    Artist

  • Struck, Hermann, 1876-1944

    Israëls, Jozef, 1824-1911

    • Title

  • A Son of the ancient race : after an oil painting by Jozef Israëls / etching by Hermann Struck

  • Physical Description

    Photographic etching ; 97 x 74 cm. (with mat) ; 38 1/8" x 29 1/8" (with mat) ; with frame: 32 3/8" x 40 5/8" (83 x 104 cm.)

  • Summary

    The etching by Hermann Struck is based on an oil painting by Jozef Israëls, held at The Jewish Museum in New York. That painting in turn is based on an 1888 watercolor in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. It shows a weary, probably Jewish secondhand clothes peddler, sitting on the stoop of a darkened doorway, with miscellaneous household objects on either side of him. Jozef Israëls' signature is included in the etching, with Struck's signature below in the lower left corner. – It is the largest etching by Struck and was originally acquired in Holland in 1920.

  • Subject

    Painting, Dutch; Peddlers in art

  • Medium

    Etchings

  • Accession Number

  • URL

Biographical/Historical Information

The painter and etcher Jozef Israëls was born to Jewish parents in Groningen, Netherlands, on January 27, 1824. Israëls, often called the “Dutch Millet”, was the leader of the Hague school of peasant genre painting, which flourished in the Netherlands between 1860 and 1900. In Amsterdam he painted somber and moving scenes from the lives of Dutch fishermen and peasantry, for which he soon became famous. In 1870 he moved to The Hague. His dramatic use of silvery-gray light is expressive of the melancholy character of his themes. Israëls was equally proficient in oil and watercolor and was an accomplished etcher. Among his best-known works are "The Zandvoort Fisherman", "Toilers of the Sea", and "David Singing before Saul" (all in Amsterdam), as well as "Expectation" (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). Jozef Israëls died in The Hague on August 12, 1911.

Hermann (Chaim Aaron Ben David) Struck (1876-1944) was born and educated in Berlin. He was an early Zionist, traveling to Palestine as early as 1903 and settling in Haifa in 1923. In 1915 he enlisted in the German army and served in Russia, where he produced a large number of prints with subject matter that included the landscapes of the small towns inhabited by Jews, Jewish character studies and studies of German officers and enlisted men. Struck was best known as an etcher, having written a standard text, "Die Kunst des Radierens" (The Art of Etching) in 1908, and taught graphic technique to a number of artists, among them Chagall, Lieberman and Corinth. He was also a master at lithography. Struck was an Orthodox Jew, yet held the enlightened view that culture and religion could thrive cooperatively in the Land of Israel. This notion came to fruition upon his immigration to Haifa, where he created an artistic community and participated in the development of the Tel Aviv Museum and Bezalel art school in Jerusalem.

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Citation

Struck, Hermann: A Son of the ancient race : after an oil painting by Jozef Israëls / etching by Hermann Struck, Leo Baeck Institute, 2002.41.