Born in Lwów (Lemberg), Austro-Hungarian Empire (today Lviv, Ukraine), Wilhelm Wachtel studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków and later in Munich. He lived in Palestine from 1936 to the outbreak of World War II, at which point he moved to the United States. Many of Wachtel’s existing pieces render Jewish scenes, both mundane and mythological. However, much of his oeuvre was lost during World War II.
Like most of Henry Valensi’s other “Symphony” paintings, Symphonie Vitale does not refer to a specific piece of music, but instead reflects the principles of Musicalism, the art movement founded by…
Ernst Josephson painted David and Saul early in his career, when he was working with mostly historical and biblical subjects. Here a young, eroticized David plays a lyre for a darkly brooding King…