About the author: Samuel Hirszenberg, (1865 Lodz – 1908 Jerusalem), A painter of Jewish origin, brother of Leon (Noel), also a painter, and the architect Henryk, brother-in-law of the sculptor Henryk Glicenstein, associated with the artistic circles of Lodz, Munich, Cracow. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Cracow, and then – thanks to a scholarship obtained from the Lodz industrialists, including Izrael Kalmanowicz Poznański – at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and the Academy of Filippo Colarossi in Paris. After leaving school he returned to his hometown Lodz, where he worked on commission, for example on the decorative oil paintings in the interiors of Poznański’s palace (today the Museum of the City of Lodz). At the invitation of Teresa Silberstein he went to her estate in Lisowice, he travelled to Rome, Brittany and Munich. In 1904 he moved to Cracow, and in 1906 he went to Jerusalem to take up the post of professor in the School of Fine Arts and the Artistic Crafts Becalel. His artwork evolved from Academic Realism to Impressionism and Symbolism, entering the ground of Expressionism. He painted melancholic genre scenes on Jewish life, allegorical compositions often inspired by literature. He presented the subject of persecution and pogroms against Jews, depicted Jewish rituals and traditions, the process of assimilation. At the same time he created traditional academic portraits, impressionistic landscapes, decorative compositions, and nudes.
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