Creator Bio
Maurits Leon
1838–1865
The Dutch painter Maurits Leon was born to a distinguished Sephardic family in The Hague. Following his studies there and at the Royal Academy in Antwerp, he settled in Amsterdam, where he became known for his genre paintings and received the Royal Medal in 1861. In the 1860s, his focus shifted to painting Jewish religious services in an Amsterdam synagogue as well as subjects related to the history of Sephardic Jews in Holland. Unfortunately, the whereabouts of all but a few of Leon’s paintings are unknown.
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
Spinoza before His Judges
Based on a painting, now lost, by Maurits Leon, this lithograph by Johannes Heinrich Rennefeld (1832–1877) seems to depict a scene from an 1837 novel about Spinoza by German Jewish author Berthold…
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.