Lazar Krestin 1868-1938

Yona Fischer and Irith Hadar, Editors, Moshe Mokady, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 1999,  no. 14, p. 51

The son of a Talmudic scholar, Lazar Krestin was born in Kovno, Lithuania, and studied in Vienna.  He worked in Munich, Vienna and Odessa before coming to Jerusalem in 1910 at the request of Bezalel Academy of Art founder, Boris Schatz.  Krestin started his career producing diminutive, meticulously fashioned panels in the manner of Isidor Kaufmann.  During his travels, he visited Paris where he came into contact with the French Impressionists.  In later years he was influenced by their techniques, while maintaining his interest in painting portraits and scenes from Eastern European Jewish life.

The present lot is a 1918 depiction of  Israeli artist Moshe Mokady’s family, (Mokady Hebraized his name from Brandstatter in 1926), created in Vienna prior to their immigration to Eretz Israel in 1920.  In Vienna, Krestin was well known in the Jewish community and devoted himself to portrayals of its Jewish residents and their lives. It was Moshe’s father, Avraham, who chose Krestin to teach his son painting between 1914-1916.  

Portrait of the Brandstatter Family shows the patriarchal father seated with his family at a Shabbat or festival table and illustrates  Krestins’s method of juxtaposing age and youth, innocence and wisdom.  The work reflects Krestin’s academic expertise in the use of contrasts of light and dark and his talent for the delineation of fine details seen both in the figures and decorative elements.  His freer treatment of the setting mirrors his appreciation of the Impressionists.  Krestin’s  handling of the subject reveals both his interest in Jewish genre scenes while revealing a knowledge of contemporary artistic trends.