Portrait of a Hassidic Rabbi.

KAUFMANN, ISIDOR.

(Austro-Hungarian, 1853-1921)

Oil on wood panel. Signed by artist along right margin. Framed.

The most outstanding of all Jewish portrait artists. Provenance: Acquired by Edmund Traub in Vienna, the early 1920’s. Displayed in the Villa Traub, Prague, until 1938. Due to rising political chaos, Traub removed his art collection to London, where he and his family settled in 1938. The painting remained the property of Edmund Traub in Primrose Hill, London, until his death in 1956. The painting was then passed to his daughter, Anna Traub Strasmore of Maida Vale, London. Upon her death in 2000, the painting passed to her son, Martin Strasmore of Weston, Conn. The Villa Traub in Prague (Bruno Paul architect, 1928) a paradigm of modern classicism, was sold by the Traub descendants in 2004 for use as Hungary’s Embassy to the Czech Republic. REFERENCES: For a very similar Kaufmann portrait presently in The Tate Gallery, London (previously, in the collection of Viscount Bearstead) see Catalogue of the Jewish Museum of Vienna, Isidor Kaufmann (1995) pp. 208-9 (illus) entitled: “Young Rabbi from N…” See also, Portfolio Isidor Kaufmann, Verlag Manz, Vienna-Leipzig (1925) no. 7 “Der Fanatiker.”