Jewish Family (1913)

Mark Gertler

oil on canvas

Tate, London, Liverpool and St Ives

Classification:

Painting

Materials:

Oil, Canvas

Physical Object Description:

Inscribed: ‘Mark Gertler, 1st Sept 1913’ top left

Dimensions:

85.9 x 70.2 x 10.3 (frame) cm

Accession Number:

N06231

Credit:

Presented by the Contemporary Art Society, 1954

Scheme:

Sir Edward Marsh Bequest (1953)

Ownership history:

Purchased from the artist by Sir Edward Marsh (1872-1953) by 1914; by whom bequeathed to the Contemporary Art Society, 1953; presented to the Tate Gallery, 1954

Relationship:

Tate, London, Liverpool and St Ives Edward 'Eddie' Howard Marsh

Subject:

Family, Portraits

Before attending the Slade School of Fine Art in Bloomsbury (1908-12), Gertler had grown up in a Jewish community around Spitalfields, in London’s East end. Many of his early pictures included friends and family as his subjects. His mother regularly modelled for him, often smartly dress but here the artist has depicted her as a peasant wearing a headscarf and a member of an archetypal poor immigrant Jewish family, inspired by folk art but also showing the influence of recent European art movements which had been displayed at Roger Fry’s Second Post-Impressionist exhibition in 1912.

The picture was shown at the Twentieth Century Art exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery and the New English Art Club in the summer of 1914 as ‘Family Group’ when the civil servant and collector Sir Edward Marsh (1872-1953), who had only recently began acquiring modern British art, became his patron and purchased it. It was among the huge bequest of over 200 artworks Marsh made to the Contemporary Art Society, after being its Chairman from 1936.

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