Isidor Kaufmann

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Description

Isidor Kaufmann
A Business Secret
signed Isidor Kaufmann Wien (lower right)
oil on panel
13 1/4 by 11 1/4 in.
33.6 by 28.5 cm

Provenance

Acquired by the father of the present owner circa 1950
Thence by descent

Exhibited

Vienna, Jüdischen Museum der Stadt Wien, Rabbiner, Bocher, Talmudschüler, Bilder des Wiener Malers Isidor Kaufman, 1853-1921, February 24-May 7, 1995

Literature

Ost und West, Illustrierte Monatsschrift für modernes Judentum, Berlin, 1903, vol. 3, no. 9, illustrated
Moderne Welt, 1921/22, vol. 3, p. 10, no. 8, illustrated (the obituary of the artist)
Heinrich Fuchs, Die österreichischen Maler des 19. Jarhunderts, Vienna, 1973, vol. 2, p. 277, illustrated
G. Tobias Natter, Isidor Kaufmann, Vienna, 1995, p. 188, illustrated p. 189

Catalogue Note

Kaufmann’s first inspiration for his subjects came from the successful members of the Munich School: Grutzner’s tipsy monks and Defregger's Tyrolean maidens informed his early creation of genre scenes. The present work keeps that light-hearted mood, adding Jewish subjects to make the scene Kaufmann’s own. Sympathetic critics of the era were ambivalent about Kaufmann’s willingness to paint his 1880s scenes of “traders and hawkers” in a less than morally exalted light: “They are the greatest idealists and yet they mock, they always live at the doorstep of riches yet are penny pinchers; they are holders of eternal truth and yet are bogged down by quibbling sophistry; and all splendors are before them, yet around them there is junk and dirt and dust and trash” (G. Kutna, Isidor Kaufmann, Ost und West, Berlin, 1903, p. 594).

But Kaufmann’s painstaking inclusion of myriad details ultimately engages the viewer. His use of the subtlest gradations of color, in the limited palette range from blue to black to beige, also serve to elevate the work from a depiction of a single moment in time to a tour-de-force of artistic achievement.