Ben Uri Pre-Eminent Collection

Sabbath Rest

Artist information

Name Samuel Hirszenberg (1865-1908)

Other name Shmuel Hirszenberg

Born Łódź, Poland

Died Jerusalem, Israel

Find more work in the collection by this artist

Samuel Hirszenberg was born into a Jewish family in Łódź, Poland on 22 February 1865; his younger brother was the painter Leon Hirszenberg (1869-1945), whom he instructed early on. Łódź was then a burgeoning industrial city but when, at the age of 15, Hirszenberg entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, he entered an important cultural setting. Two years later he completed his training in Munich at the Royal Academy of Arts (1885-89), under the Polish master Jan Matejko (1838–1893), following directly in the footsteps of Maurycy Gotlieb (1856–1879). In 1888 Hirszenberg spent ten important months in Paris, studying at the Académie Colarossi, alongside fellow Pole Maurycy Trębacz, before family circumstances recalled him to Łódź. There, over the next decade, he established a reputation for his monumental paintings depicting the condition of impoverished Polish Jews and was preoccupied with themes of exile and wandering. His lost masterpiece, 'Exile' (1904) was reproduced in the Yiddish magazine 'Ost und West' to great acclaim in 1905. However, 'Sabbath Rest' (1894, Ben Uri Collection), a later version of an 1890 work of the same title and similar composition (Museum of Modern Art, Łódź) shows how his interest in this subject pre-dates this composition. He also frequently painted landscapes and portraits. Around 1898-99 Hirszenberg was commissioned by the Poznański family to create paintings for Izrael Poznański’s palace. In October 1907 however, Hirszenberg and his wife Dinah (a convert to Judaism), moved to Jerusalem, then under Ottoman rule, where Hirszenberg taught at the newly established Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts upon the invitation of its founder Boris Schatz.

Samuel Hirszenberg died suddenly, possibly of dysentery, on 15 September 1908 and was buried on the Mount of Olives. His work is in the Ben Uri Collection in the UK, in international public collections including the Museum of Modern Art in Łódź, Poland, and Ein Harod and the Israel Museum in Israel, as well as private collections in America and Russia.

Object Details

Date 1894

Object type painting

Medium oil on canvas

Materials and techniques oil (medium) painting (technique) canvas (support)

Unframed 149.5 x 206.5 cm

Framed 161.5 x 220 cm

Signed and dated (lower right): 'S. Hirszenberg, 1894'

Acquisition presented by Mosheh Oved 1923

Accession number 1987-148

Display status not on display

Hirszenberg was preoccupied with themes of exile and wandering. His painting, 'Exile'(1904, lost), was reproduced in the Yiddish magazine 'Ost und West' to great acclaim the following year. However, 'Sabbath Rest', a later version of an 1890 work of the same title and similar composition in the Museum of Modern Art, Lodz, shows how his interest in this subject pre-dates this composition. In this version, several details have been altered to emphasise the narrative of migration. Three generations are gathered in one room around the bedridden matriarch to keep the Sabbath. Their piety is indicated by the candlesticks on the table and the hanging star-shaped Judenstern lamp, which burns for 24 hours. A young boy leans on his grandfather, his parents seated at the table; the muted palette conveys their poverty, but two older grandchildren by the window are symbolically closer to a brighter future. Their traditional way of life is contrasted with the encroaching industrialization of the Lodz workers’ quarter just glimpsed through the window behind them. The elder grandson reads aloud from a ‘Letter from Argentina’, an alternative title for the painting according to ‘Ruth’ (Hirszenberg’s convert wife) in 'Ost und West'.

The theme of migration is further emphasized by the identification of the sitter in the larger portrait as Baron Maurice de Hirsch, a tireless supporter of Jewish immigration to Argentina, via his Jewish Colonial Organization, established in 1891. The second portrait is thought to be that of the relative who has migrated to Argentina. Hirszenberg’s work influenced a number of later Jewish artists including Marc Chagall and Alfred Wolmark who specifically referenced 'Sabbath Rest' in his own 'Sabbath Afternoon' transposing the setting to London’s Jewish East End.

'Sabbath Rest' is a key painting in the Ben Uri collection, and one of the earliest acquisitions, purchased in 1923 for £143 through subscription and the support, principally, of Moshe Oved. It was the opening exhibit in the first collection display when ‘Ben Uri Gallery and Club’ opened in May 1925 at 68 Great Russell Street, opposite the British Museum. This painting was also loaned to the Whitechapel Art Gallery's 'Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities' (17 May - 26 June 1927).

Selected exhibition history

1925
Official Opening at Great Russell Street
Ben-Uri Jewish Art Society Gallery and Club


1927
Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities
Whitechapel Art Gallery


1930
Mansell Street Gallery Opening: Catalogue and Survey of Activities
Jewish Art and Literary Society Ben-Uri


1935
Israel Zangwill Memorial Exhibition
Ben Uri Jewish Art Gallery


1945
Exhibition of Paintings by A. A Wolmark (Konstam Collection), Dobrinsky Paris, and a selection of work from the Ben Uri Collection
Ben Uri Art Gallery


1946
Selections from the Ben Uri Permanent Collection of Paintings, Sculpture & Drawings
Ben Uri Art Gallery


1948
Exhibition of Jewish Art
North Western Reform Synagogue


1970
Paintings from the Ben Uri Art Gallery
Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum


1990
Ben Uri Highlights: Key Works and Figures
Ben Uri Art Society


1990
Shtetl Scenes: A Selection from the Society's Permanent Collection together with New Acquisitions
Ben Uri Art Gallery


2001
Experiencing Emancipation: European Jewish Artists Confront Modernity, 1833-1914
The Jewish Museum, New York


2003
The Claim of Images: Jewish Perspectives in Modern Art
Museum Bochum


2009
Homeless & Hidden 1: World Class Collection Homeless & Hidden
Ben Uri Gallery


2015
Out of Chaos – Ben Uri: 100 Years in London
Somerset House


Literature

Richard Cohen and Mirjam Rajner, Samuel Hirszenberg, 1865-1908 - A polish Jewish Artist in Turmoil (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization in association with Liverpool University Press, 2022), pp. 104-105; Richard I Cohen and Mirjam Rajner, Invoking Samuel Hirszenberg's Artistic Legacy - Encountering Exile (Israel: Israel Center of Research Excellence, I-CORE/Bar-Ilan University, 2015), pp. 46-65, and illus., p. 49, fig. 2; Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall, eds., Out of Chaos: Ben Uri; 100 Years in London (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2015), pp. 28-29; Oil Paintings in Public Ownership in Camden (London: The Public Catalogue Foundation, 2013), p. 19, illus.; Walter Schwab and Julia Weiner, eds., Jewish Artists: the Ben Uri Collection - Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 1994), p. 53.

Sabbath Rest by Samuel Hirszenberg

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Related works

Sabbath Afternoon
by Alfred Wolmark