Édouard Moyse was born in Nancy and raised in Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts. He became one of the first artists in France (along with the French Jewish painter Jacques-Émile-Édouard Brandon) to represent Jewish subjects. Moyse painted biblical themes, scenes of Jewish life and ritual, significant historical events in the life of the French Jewish community, and portraits of rabbis. He first showed his work at the Salon, the annual art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, in 1850 and was awarded a second-class medal in 1862.
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.
Édouard Moyse’s paintings of Jewish religious life earned him the nickname “the painter of rabbis.” His paintings often depict an idealized Judaism not situated in a specific place or time. The…
Leopold Pilichowski began painting pictures with Jewish themes shortly after moving to the Polish industrial city of Łódź, around 1894. He depicted the everyday life of impoverished Jews and Jewish…
There are numerous terra-cotta plaque figurines of females, some naked and others clothed, holding disks, mostly from northern Israel and Transjordan. Many come from border towns and towns whose…