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    Artist

  • Nussbaum, Jakob, 1873-1936

    • Title

  • Portrait of Ella and Moritz Werner

  • Physical Description

    1 painting : oil on canvas ; 27 3/4" x 37 3/4" ; 70 x 95 1/2 cm., + frame (33 1/8" x 43 1/4")

  • Date

    1923

  • Notes

    signed by the artist in the upper right corner

  • Summary

    Portrait of the married couple, Ella and Moritz Werner, from the waist up, seated in front of an earth-toned domestic background, with Ella to the left in a green dress, and Mortiz in a brown jacket and red tie. Moritz has a goatee and wears glasses.

  • Depicted

    Werner, Ella, 1880-1964; Werner, Moritz, 1873-1939

  • Subject

    Portraits, Couples

  • Genre

    Portraits

  • Medium

    Paintings

  • Part Of

    Adolphe J. Warner Collection, AR 6716

  • Accession Number

  • URL

Biographical/Historical Information

Dr. Mortz Werner was born in Frankfurt in 1873 and died in New York 1939. He wrote for various German-language periodicals and taught courses on literature and other topics at Lessing Gymnasium and Freies Jüdisches Lehrhaus in Frankfurt am Main.

His wife Ella Werner née Plaut was born in Karlsbad (Karlovy Vary) in 1880, the daughter of Rabbi Rudolf Plaut. The family moved to Frankfurt am Main, where she attended the Philanthropin academy, and she increasingly devoted her energies to social work and women's and children's causes, including the Jewish Women's Association (Jüdischer Frauenbund). She emigrated with her family to New York City, where she died in 1964.

Jakob Nussbaum was born January 8, 1873 in Rhina near Kassel to Baruch Nussbaum and Sarah Nussbaum (born Katz). From 1878 to 1882 he attended the Volksschule in Rhina, then his family moved to Frankfurt am Main where he was educated for a career in commerce. From 1893 to 1896 he studied art in Munich, first at the Private Academy of Arts run by the Hungarian painter Simon Hollósy, later at the Academy of Fine Arts under Gabriel von Hackl. Nussbaum and various other artists accompanied Hollósy to Hungary, where he intended to establish an artists’ colony devoted solely to plein-air painting. In 1902 he went back to Frankfurt, where he had a successful career as a painter of landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. Nussbaum participated in the Berlin Secession and together with Corinth, Slevogt, and Liebermann became one of the leading representatives of German impressionism. During World War I he was drafted to document the war as an artist. In 1932 he began teaching at the Frankfurt School of Arts and Crafts. He also was elected an honorary member of the Frankfurt Kuenstlerbund but lost all positions after the Nazis came to power in 1933. As a devoted Jew and Zionist he decided to immigrate to Palestine together with his wife and his children soon after 1933, and settled at Lake Kinneret, where he continued to paint expressionist landscapes until his death in 1936.

Related Works in the LBI Catalog

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Citation

Nussbaum, Jakob: Portrait of Ella and Moritz Werner, Leo Baeck Institute, 2019.24.