Ellen Gertrude Cohen was born in Philadelphia into an affluent traditional family who had arrived from England in 1844 and supported her artistic journey. She studied at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Académie Royale de Peinture in Paris. Cohen, who exhibited watercolors and portraits in a number of galleries in London and Paris, is most remembered for her graphic contributions, notably in the Strand Magazine, Pall Mall, Pictorial World, Queen, and The Studio. Her A Little Refugee from Russia (1893) was exhibited at the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. Cohen’s sister, Katherine M. Cohen, was an American sculptor and feminist art activist.
Baruch Spinoza, the Portuguese-Jewish philosopher considered one of the most important thinkers of the early modern period, served as a “countercultural” icon for many Jewish artists and intellectuals…
This beautiful, embroidered challah cover was made in Jerusalem around the year 1890 as a gift of thanks to “the gentlelady Mazal Tov Eliyah Ezra.” It is signed at the bottom by a mother and daughter…
In the seventeenth century, members of the Suasso (Suaço, Suasco) family, bankers originally from Spain, lived in Holland and England. Antonio (Isaac) Lopez Suasso resided in The Hague during the…