JEWISHNESS AND BRITISHNESS AT
DR RACHEL DICKSON
Association of Art Historians Annual Conference, University of Cambridge, 2026
Session: Jews and Heritage in Twentieth Century Britain: Collections, Aesthetics, Narratives
Jewishness and Britishness at the Ben Uri Gallery: 1915-1953: Part 2: The 1944 Opening Exhibition: Dr Rachel Dickson
In early New Year 1944, Ben Uri proudly presented its reopening exhibition in a Georgian townhouse located at 14 Portman Street, London W1, just behind Marble Arch, which ran from 9th January to 15th February. The wider significance of this event was confirmed by the breadth of coverage across the Jewish, non-Jewish, and Yiddish press. The Jewish Chronicle heralded ‘an important event in Jewish cultural life in this country’ while News Review, 1 referencing the familiar trope of ‘Wandering Jews’, confirmed that Jewish painters and sculptors had now found a ‘resting place’. The Birmingham Daily Post, in a more nuanced response, however, acknowledged Ben Uri’s critical role vis a vis European Jewry, observing that the ‘Society’s activities have assumed great significance since the Nazis overran the greater part of Europe’2
For Ben Uri the event was significant for several reasons. Firstly: the Society was now sole occupant of its own dedicated multi-storey, central London home, no longer cuckooing into other organisations across the capital (previous homes included the Jews Temporary shelter in the East End; and more centrally, the Jewish Communal Centre at Woburn House and the 3 4 Anglo-Palestine Club in Great Windmill Street). The acquisition of the building– virtually 5 rent free– was due largely through the efforts of Ben Uri’s indefatigable treasurer, Cyril Ross
Jewish Chronicle, 21 January1944, p. 16.
‘A Jewish Art Centre’, Birmingham Daily Post, 7 January 1944, p. 2. 2 1930-1932, 63 Mansell Street, E1. 3 1933-1936, Woburn House, Woburn Square, WC1 [rented].
4 1936-1939, 43-44 Great Windmill Street, W1 (3rd floor) (Anglo Palestine club) [rented].
5
(who safely stored the Society’s art collection during the war in the vaults of his West End store, Swears and Wells, at 374 Oxford Street).6
This move enabled Ben Uri to make several critical changes. It could now host a show which featured over 170 exhibits (one of the largest, if not the largest to date, based on number of works), and for the first time in its almost three decades, to potentially expand its varied cultural activities under one roof, displaying simultaneously both temporary exhibitions and works from its permanent collection – which now numbered around 150 pieces.
The exhibition catalogue, with its new modern sans serif font, shows Ben Uri confidently and graphically announcing its presence, a particularly bold step when many commercial galleries and museums remained closed due to the war, whose end was still more than a year away. It was more than five years since the previous Ben Uri exhibition, which ran for only three days in June 1938 at the Queens Hall ((home of the Palestine Exhibition and Fair), the hiatus 7 marked by a period of inactivity. But more importantly, the catalogue shows a significant change in name. Ben Uri is no longer the Ben Uri Jewish Art Gallery; it is simply Ben Uri Art Gallery, this change in identity recorded in minutes dated 17 November 1943. Whereas the 8 Society’s aim, as stated in the 1938 catalogue, was the creation of ‘a permanent collection of works by Jewish artists for public exhibition’, the 1944 ‘Introduction’ announced, rather, that the show was: ‘dedicated to Josef Israels, Camille Pissarro and Max Liebermann, three great artists who lived in the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century’, acknowledging 9 that the conflict itself created certain practical obstacles, such as the limitations on loans of masterworks, while, with regard to contemporary artists, ‘nobody will in wartime expect this exhibition to be complete’.10
6 117-119).
Cyril Ross was also an exhibitor, showing three works, including one from the permanent collection (cat. nos.
7
The exhibition ran from June 21 to June 23, 1938.
8
See Executive Council Minute Book, 1930s, IMG_7176, Ben Uri Archives.
9 Ben Uri Archives.
Catalogue for Opening Exhibition, January 9th to February 15th 1944, Ben Uri Art Gallery, Introduction’, p. 2,
10
Op. Cit, p. 3.
Secondly, in providing accommodation onsite, Ben Uri was able to appoint and house its first salaried curator / secretary, German émigré artist and art historian, Dr. Frederick (Fritz) Solomonski (1899-1980, himself a pupil of Liebermann). Solomonski was interned during 1940-41 in Hutchinson– the so-called ‘artists’ camp’– on the Isle of Man, with many distinguished fellow creatives, including Eric Kahn, Kurt Schwitters, Ludwig Meidner, and the sculptors, Siegfried Charoux and Georg Ehrlich– a number of whom also featured in the exhibition– and with art historian and chronicler of internment art, Klaus Hinrichsen (1912-2004). Solomonski contributed artwork to camp journals and exhibitions and drew portraits of fellow internees– a common activity among many incarcerated artists, most notably Schwitters. Hinrichsen suggested disparagingly that Solomonski was a better singer than artist, and that Ben Uri wanted him to organise ‘kleine Tänzle, little dances– little social events’, clearly a task not relished by the academically trained and religiously inclined curator.11
Little archival material remains to record the process of his recruitment or to identify other candidates. Minutes from 19 October 1943 simply introduce him as ‘Curator of the Gallery […] in place of Mr. Joseph Yahuda who has resigned’. However, it was evidently an unsatisfactory appointment, for despite organising a successful Herman Struck retrospective immediately after the opening show, Solomonski remained for barely a year. Indeed, he seems curiously absence from minutes, though a rare notable success was recorded on 6 March 1945: ‘The Curator announced that the Directors of the Leicester Galleries had offered to present […] the important picture Merry-Go-Round by Mark Gertler. This was gladly accepted’. Eight months later, minutes note Solomonski’s sacking, because ‘it was essential to have an Organising Secretary, who knows the Community, for the future survival of the gallery.’ This dramatic statement suggests that Ben Uri evidently felt that an émigré was not 12 suited to the role, which, by inference, should instead be handed to a member of the established Anglo-Jewish community.
Klaus Hinrichsen interview (typescript), AJR Audio-Visual History Collection, 20 November 2003, location: 11 Highgate, London; interviewer: Anthony Grenville, Tape 1, 35.
Executive Minutes, 12 November 1945, Ben Uri Archives. 12
Returning to exhibition itself: it featured 173 works by 64 artists, encompassing sculpture, printmaking, painting, drawing and illustration. With the highlighted loans by Camille and Lucien Pissarro, Jozef Israëls and Max Lieberman, Ben Uri demonstrated that it was able to show museum-worthy European Jewish masters, its respectability further enhanced by loans from prestigious London galleries. Benno Schotz’ bronze portrait of D M MacDonald (cat. no. 130) was loaned from Lefevre, while the Leicester Galleries sent works by Marc Chagall, Simeon Solomon, Jacob Epstein and Mark Gertler. Other 20th century greats on display 13 14 included Chaim Soutine and German printmaker, Hermann Struck– only recently deceased 15 and reflecting the personal academic interest of Solomonski. Closer inspection of the catalogue, however, reveals that these masters were, in a most egalitarian way, subsumed within the exhibition as a whole; artists were simply listed alphabetically, running from Jusuf Abbo to Archibald Ziegler, with owners/lenders named in brackets.
More than 20 works were from Ben Uri’s permanent collection, reflecting the two main 16 cohorts of Jewish migration into the UK; the first arriving in the late 19th /early 20th century, mainly from Eastern Europe and, the second, now known as the Hitler émigrés, fleeing Nazi occupied lands since the early 1930s. Ben Uri’s founders largely came from the first group–often Yiddish speaking, Ost Juden; the second group, mainly German-speaking refugees, swiftly adopted English as a lingua franca.
Works by the earlier cohort included Polish Zionist, Leopold Pilichowski’s moving visual declaration of Jewish identity, Hear O Israel (cat. no. 105); portraits of Israel Zangwill (the 17 so-called Jewish Dickens) by Jacob Kramer (cat. no. 63) and Alfred Wolmark (cat. no. 170);
Leicester Galleries lent two sculptures: Esther (cat. no. 14); Rabindranath Tagore (cat. no. 15) and three 13 drawings: Woman Lying Down, no. Death of Ammon (cat. no. 20) and Illustration for Moshe Oved’s Book of Affinity (cat. no. 21).
Leicester Galleries lent four works by Gertler: three paintings, Flowers in Brown Vase (cat. No. 27), Still Life 14 (cat. no. 28) and Nude (cat. no. 29), along with the drawing, Peasants (cat. no. 30).
House in the Forest (cat. no. 149) was lent by Mrs Robert Solomon, Ben Uri’s Chairman from 1943-1966 and 15 member of the Art Committee from 1931-1961.
Ben Uri’s permanent collection can be searched at: https://www.benuricollection.org.uk/ 16 Pilichowski had several roles in Ben Uri’s early governance, including: Vice-President, 1923-1924 and 17 Honorary President, 1930-1933.
and Zeev Ben Zvi’s modernist portrait of Hore Belisha (cat. no. 6). The most recent 18 addition, Still Life, by Polish refugee Jankel Adler, had only been acquired in 1937, prior to his seeking permanent refuge in the UK in 1940 with the Polish Army, following the Fall of France.
More than a quarter of the 64 exhibitors were recent arrivals from Nazi occupied Europe, creating a remarkable list of creatives in flight:
Jusuf Abbo (1888-1953); Jankel Adler (1895-1949); Alva (1901-1973), George Ehrlich (1897-1966); Benno Elkan (1877-1960); Hans Feibusch 1898-1998); Else Fraenkel 1892-1975); Alexander Jaray (1870-1943); Erich Kahn (1904-71); Philipp Kaufmann (1866-1969), Else Meidner (1901-1987); Joseph Oppenheimer (1876-1966); Max Sokol (1895-1973); Fritz Solomonski (1899-1980); Arthur Szyk (1894-1951); Walter Trier (1890-1951) and Erich Wolfsfeld (1885-1956).
Many works were lent directly by the artists themselves, such as Else Fraenkel’s Musician. 19 Fraenkel was one of five women exhibitors, along with recent fellow émigré, Else Meidner, wife of Ludwig (who was absent). Alva, despite his German-Jewish identity, showed a very British Coronation scene from 1938, next to his prophetic, Neue Ordnung [New Order]. 20 21
The participation of these émigrés was as a direct result of changes in the Society’s open exhibition rules. As early as September 1933, Secretary Marcus Lipton had warned in the press that ‘Jewish Artists will be lost to Jewry without Jewish Support.’ This general 22 admonishment, though initially directed at Anglo-Jewry, became altogether more urgent and specific, as the situation deteriorated in Europe and it became apparent that the Society’s duty
Zeev Ben-Zvi was born in Poland in 1904 and studied at the Academy of Art in Warsaw before immigrating 18 to Palestine in 1924. After working for two years with Boris Schatz (1866–1932), founder of the Bezalel School of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, Ben-Zvi then taught sculpture there.
Isaac Leslie Hore-Belisha, 1st Baron Hore-Belisha (1893–1957) was a British Jewish politician, initially a Liberal, then a Liberal National and, finally, a Conservative. He served as an MP, Minister of Transport in the Cabinet, and then as War Secretary from 1937 to 1940.
Fraenkel arrived in England, via Paris, in 1935, bringing some of her sculptures with her, including Mask of a 19 Musician (Mina Tobler) (1927). Tobler was the lover of sociologist and economist, Max Weber.
See https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/elsa-fraenkel
20
Cat. no. 4.
Cat. no. 5. 21
22
Jewish Chronicle, 29 September 1933, p.13.
was to assist the growing number of displaced artists. Henceforth, ‘Annual Exhibitions of Works by Jewish Artists’, which began in 1934, were enriched by émigré participation, and in early 1936, to further support living artists, it was agreed to show ‘one picture of every artist who submitted […provided] each picture should not have been exhibited the previous year.’, a policy agreed by committee in February 1936 , and subsequently publicised in the Jewish 23 Chronicle This effectively opened the door to recently arrived refugee artists. 24
Furthermore, the exhibition was supported by distinguished private collectors. These included eleven women, several of whom were closely connected with Ben Uri and broader Anglo-Jewry, such as Mrs Robert Solomon and Mrs Ernest Lowy (the suffragette, Henrietta Solomon); Alfred Wolmark, along with recent arrivals from Germany. The latter group included textile manufacturer, Erich Goeritz, and his wife, Edith, along with art dealer, Dr. 25 Grete Ring ((1887–1952), Liebermann’s niece), who all loaned Liebermanns, while 26 gallerist, Lea Bondi Jaray (1880–1969) lent her husband’s bust of Liebermann. Ben Uri 27 supporter, Jack Posnansky loaned Ehrlich’s portrait of his daughter, Gillian; she later 28 became Gillian Raffles, owner of the Mercury Gallery in Cork Street, and, in turn, an important supporter of émigré artists.
In its review, the Jewish Chronicle generously summed up the display:
The exhibition is not really one for criticism. It is catholic in the extreme, and its examples range from the mid-nineteenth century painters to the modernists. […] It would be impossible to give the whole list of those represented here, but the visitor will find in the catalogue ample evidence, from the well-known names, that Jews can be numbered among the foremost artists of the day’.29
Minutes, 25 February 1936. Ben Uri archives.
Chronicle, 27 March 1936, p. 61.
25 separately lent The Artist Painting (cat. no. 79).
Goeritz (1889-1955) lent five works, including a portrait of his wife: cat, nos. 66-70. Edith Goeritz
Ring lent Sketch for Jews Street (cat. no. 87) and Self-Portrait (cat. no. 88). Although she was not married, 26 the catalogue lists her as ’Mrs. Grete Ring).
Cat. no. 44. 27
Cat. no. 9. 28
Art Notes: ‘Ben Uri Gallery Reopened’ Jewish Chronicle, 21 January 1944, p. 16.
However, beyond this perhaps simplistic and positive spin, I am tempted to end with a question: what does this complex exhibition really tell us about Ben Uri’s position in early 1944? We can see that it was clearly grappling with the slippery concept of Jewish identity in Britain towards the end of the war, and the impact of this cohort of newly arrived Hitler émigrés, unsettling the earlier migrants of established Anglo-Jewry, who were nevertheless only too aware of their societal obligation towards their co-religionists. Many refugee artists brought influences of the Bauhaus, modernism and expressionism with them, which changed the aesthetic ‘feel’ of exhibitions and the collection itself, going forward. Furthermore, it is evident in Ben Uri’s immediate postwar history, following this re-opening exhibition, that it was able to accommodate these new arrivals and to absorb their artistic visions and approaches, helping to shape the exhibition programme and permanent collection that exists today.
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