Leonid Osipovich Pasternak, “Jewish Musicians,” 1901

Lithograph

5 1/8 x 3 3/4 in. (13 x 8.5 cm) (visible)

Signed along lower margin

Inv. no. ab_7418

Russian Jewish artist Leonid Pasternak (born Avrum Yitzhok-Leib, 1862–1945), father of the famous poet, author, and Noble prize laureate Boris Pasternak (1890–1960), captured one small part of the vibrant artistic culture of European Jewish culture before the Holocaust in his 1901 “Jewish Musicians” (Evreiskie muzykanty). This lithograph is part of a series of works devoted to Jewish themes and recalls his interest in Yiddish folk music.

Pasternak was born in 1862 in Odesa in present-day Ukraine. After completing his studies at the Odesa Art School (now the Grekov Art College) and the Munich Royal Academy (with a brief period studying law to satisfy his parents), Pasternak secured a position at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture. He was among the earliest of the Russian Impressionists and the primary illustrator of works by Leo Tolstoy, for which he was awarded a medal at the 1900 Paris International Exposition. He left Russia in 1921 to seek medical treatment in Berlin and chose to stay in Germany thereafter. There he became part of a large community of German Jewish modern artists. In 1938, Pasternak was forced by the Nazis to flee and found his final home in Oxford, England.