Creator Bio

Maurycy Gottlieb

1856–1879

Born to an Orthodox family in Drohobych, Galicia (now in Ukraine), Maurycy Gottlieb studied art in Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine), Vienna, Kraków, and Munich. Important early works on Jewish themes included A Jewish Wedding (1876), Self-Portrait as Ahasuerus (1876), and Shylock and Jessica (1876), inspired by Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Gottlieb is best known for the large Rembrandtesque paintings that he made in the last three years of his short life, most notably Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur (1878) and the unfinished works Christ before His Judges (1877–1879) and Christ Preaching at Capernaum (1878–1879). His premature death at age twenty-three cut off a brilliant talent, but he had already earned a place in the history of representing Jews in art for his warm, direct, and unapologetic images.

Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator

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Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur

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The women’s prayer section depicted in this painting gives a rare glimpse into the ways that women have asserted their agency and voices even in gender-segregated spaces.

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Christ Preaching at Capernaum

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Maurycy Gottlieb saw his art as essential to his universalist vision, namely, as a way to improve Polish-Jewish relations. As he said, “I am a Jew and a Pole and, God willing, I want to serve both.”…
Painting of women seated at rows of desks sewing.
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Related Guide

Painters, Sculptors, and Photographers, 1750–1880

All over the world, Jewish art reflected the hybrid nature of Jewishness, including the material circumstances and cultural milieu of the larger environment. Individual artisans and artists selected and created according to their personal and Jewish experiences.