Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur

Maurycy Gottlieb

1878

Painting depicting men in skullcaps and prayer shawls in foreground at podiums, one holding a Torah scroll, and women in background in hats and shawls.

Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur was one of the last paintings made by Maurycy Gottlieb before his death. Painted from memory when he was living in Vienna, it depicts a Yom Kippur service, possibly in the synagogue in Drohobycz, where he prayed in his youth. The stained-glass windows in the background of the women’s section and the columns supporting the vaulted roof suggest that possibility. The artist included three self-portraits at different ages: the young man with his head leaning on his hand at center, the young boy with the brocade coat at left, and a boy sharing a prayerbook with his father at right. It is thought that the young woman holding a prayerbook at upper left and the woman whispering to another woman are both meant to represent the same person, his fiancée Laura. Oddly, the mantle of the Torah scroll is embroidered with the words “. . . donated in memory of R. Moyshe [the artist’s Hebrew name] Gottlieb, the righteous of blessed memory . . . 1878,” a foreshadowing of the artist’s death at an early age. The work exudes sadness and melancholy, but perhaps minimal devotion. Gottlieb died a year after the painting was completed.

Credits

Tel Aviv Museum of Art Collection. Gift of Sidney Lamon, New York, 1955. Photo © Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 6.

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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.

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