The painter Isaac Dobrinsky was born in Makarov, Ukraine, into a traditional Jewish home and received a yeshiva education. When his father died suddenly, Dobrinsky moved to Kiev to study sculpture. In 1912, he left for Paris, where he remained until his death. Within a year of his arrival, he abandoned sculpture for painting. He and his family spent the first two years of World War II in Paris and then fled to the Dordogne. In the 1950s, he painted a memorable series of about forty portraits of Jewish boys and girls from an orphanage whose parents had been murdered in the Holocaust.
Shahn frequently based his paintings on his own photographs. East Side Soap Box is based on a photo of Jewish workers protesting in Madison Square Park in Manhattan. The Yiddish sign reads: “Nature…
Self-Portrait with Candles is a rare example of a work with a Jewish theme by Lily Delissa Joseph. Here she has painted herself holding two Sabbath candles. Her head is covered, as is traditional for…
Solomon Nunes Carvalho painted this portrait of Wakara (ca. 1808–1855) of the Timpanogos tribe (later chief of the Utah Indians) after returning from a trip to the territories of Kansas, Colorado, and…