Kaufmann Isidor (1853–1921)

Rabbi, the 1910s

oil, canvas, original frame
42 x 34.5 cm
zn. LD Isidor Kaufmann


valuation price 500 000–600 000 CZK. Attached expert opinion by PhDr. Arno Pařík from the Jewish Museum in Prague. From the opinion: Kaufmann was a member of the Society for the Conservation and Documentation of Jewish Heritage in Vienna (established in 1895) and the Jewish Museum in Vienna (founded in 1897) and was involved in creating its permanent exhibitions. He strove to faithfully capture the appearance of parts of Jewish costumes and cult objects and the environment. His detailed paintings and portraits, however, were largely composed after sketches and studies from his travels and were made almost always in the studio, only exceptionally they are real portraits. In the case of the “Portrait of a Rabbi” in the caftan and the shtreimel it is a free glaze portrait study. Kaufmann used the same face of an old man with a beard in several of his paintings,... all of which are based on the same type of the man from our portrait (differing in the arrangement of hair and beard, but identical in the idealized type and two deep wrinkles at the root of the nose)... This portrait is also signed in the usual way at bottom left and the painter therefore considered it finished. The use of the same type in a picture from 1921 and the relaxed brushwork of the painting suggest that it is most probably a work by the artist from around 1910 or a later period.