Auction 72 - Rare and Important Items
Oil on panel.
Approx. 34.5X45 cm. In an elegant frame. Cracks in the paint and minor blemishes. Minor blemishes to frame (minor restoration to top).
Enclosed: confirmation by Dutch art historian and curator Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, dated 1922, indicating that this painting is the work of a follower of Rembrandt, strongly inspired by works of the master.
The painting was displayed in the exhibition "Forgery?" (Tel-Aviv Museum, 2016. Curator: Dr. Doron Lurie) as the work of an unknown artist.
Wool knot-pile; cotton foundation.
The central panel contains three diamond-shaped medallions, depicting scrolling vines and grape clusters on a pale-colored background, surrounded by a similar design on a darker background. The central and widest of three borders running along the circumference of the rug depicts alternating pairs of deer and grape clusters, while the outer border shows a motif of peacocks and flower vases. Signed "Marbadiah Jerusalem" (Hebrew) in the margin.
An original tag sewn verso states “Marbadiah Jerusalem” and “Made in Palestine”.
260X336 cm. Good-fair condition. Some damage, loss and repairs to the pile, base and edges. Some color run. Suspension strip sewn to lower edge verso.
Literature: Jewish Carpets, by Anton Felton. Woodbridge: Antique Collectors' Club, 1997. p. 119.
Provenance: the Anton Felton collection.
Twelve printing plates used for printing some of the illustrations for The Song of Songs by Ze'ev Raban (1890-1970). [Jerusalem]: Lychenheim & Son Press, [1950s?].
The series of illustrations for The Song of Songs was created by Ze'ev Raban between 1911 and 1918, during which period he immigrated from Poland to Palestine and joined the artists of Bezalel. The entire series comprises 26 illustrations; however, some editions featured only part of them. The first edition was published in Berlin in 1923, by "HaSefer". These twelve plates were used for printing one of the later editions. Some are placed in envelopes on which a label of the printing house is glued, sometimes indicating (in German) the color for whose printing the plate was used (the illustrations, printed using the color separation process, required several plates each).
The plates:
1-2. "Behold, thou art fair, my love; behold, thou art fair; thine eyes are as doves" (1: 15) – two plates, for printing different colors.
3. "I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys" (2:1).
4. "As an apple-tree among the trees of the wood" (2:3).
5. "Hark! my beloved! behold, he cometh" (2:8).
6. "By night on my bed" (3:1).
7. "The watchmen that go about the city found me" (3:3).
8. "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem" (3:5).
9. "Who is this that cometh up out of the wilderness" (3:6).
10. "Thou art all fair, my love; and there is no spot in thee" (4:7).
11. "I sleep, but my heart waketh" (5:2).
12. "Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah" (6:4).
Enclosed are three additional plates from the printing process of the illustrations for the verses "As an apple-tree among the trees of the wood" and "I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem".
Plates: 19X12 cm on average. Good overall condition. Proof prints enclosed with some of the plates.
Literature: Ze'ev Raban, Hebrew Symbolist (Hebrew), by Bat Sheva Goldman Ida. Tel Aviv-Jerusalem: Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Yad Yitzchak Ben Zvi, 2001.
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"This book – the likes of which the Hebrew reader has truly not seen – made by the Bezalel artist Z. Raban, is worthy of attention. The artist has been gifted not only with a deep and fine feeling that penetrates the depth of this pure poetry – King Solomon's poetry – but he also realized that he should make the illustrations simple and beautiful, understandable and clear to the entire nation […] the artist Z. Raban has been able to create an original work, illustrations for an ancient Hebrew book and to a large extent he succeeded in conveying the ancient Hebrew spirit with simplicity, beauty and tenderness and mainly with the nakedness of the soul, the secret crying of love […] what helped was the painter's great love to the subject and to the beautiful Land of Israel"
Mordechai Narkis, "HaAretz", December 7, 1923, upon the publication of the first edition.
Portrait of Albert Einstein, lithograph by Boris Georgiev. Signed and dated by Einstein (in pencil, "A. Einstein 1929") and by the artist ("Boris Georgiev / Berlin V – 1929"). Berlin, May 1929.
The Bulgarian artist Boris Georgiev (1888-1962), born in Varna, studied art at the school headed by Nicholas Roerich in Saint Petersburg and was deeply affected by his style and spiritual world. Later he studied in Munich and after graduating, travelled European countries. During the late 1920s, when he was staying in Berlin, he met Albert Einstein for the first time. Einstein was impressed with Georgiev's works and helped him organize an exhibition at the Schulte gallery in Berlin. In gratitude, Georgiev made a portrait of Einstein and gave it to him as a gift. After receiving the portrait, Einstein wrote to Georgiev: "Your art made me feel in those spheres, where far from hardships and sufferings, the soul finds peace. After a long contemplation of the portrait you made, I felt the need to thank you with all my heart" (see: Roopa-Lekha, volume 52, published by All-India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, 1981. p. 60).
During the years 1931-1936, Georgiev lived in India, learned about its culture, met the leaders Mahatama Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Jawaharlal Nehru and even painted their portraits. These portraits, as well as the many other portraits Georgiev painted during his travels around the world, are unique in their soft colors and airiness which give them a dream-like quality; Georgiev drew his inspiration from Renaissance art and the spiritual doctrines he discovered throughout his life.
62X49.5 cm leaf. Mounted on a thin card mount. Good condition. Tears and minor blemishes to margins (not affecting the portrait). Traces of framing.
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The German-Jewish physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) is considered by many the greatest physicist of the 20th century. Einstein was attracted to science at a very young age, autonomously proving Pythagoras' theorem at the age of 12. In 1905, Einstein published four groundbreaking articles in the Annalen der Physik ("Annals of Physics") journal. The articles, dealing with the photoelectric effect, the Brownian motion, special relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy, are considered the fundamental building blocks of modern physics (due to their importance, the year is known as "Einstein's Extraordinary Year"). The short popular summary of one of the four articles is the well-known equation E=mc2 (Energy = mass x the speed of light squared), an equation that has become one of the most famous physics equations and the most identified with Einstein and physics in general. In 1915, after approximately ten years of work, Einstein published the General Relativity Theory – a geometric theory of gravitation which transformed the world of physics. General relativity was initially accepted in the scientific world with much skepticism; when it was finally confirmed, it was widely publicized even in the popular press and earned Einstein his world renown. Although many supported Einstein as a Nobel Prize laureate, the awarding of the prize was postponed time and again, due to the doubts of several conservative scientists and the objections of various antisemitic scientists. Eventually, in 1922 he was retroactively awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics, not for General Relativity but rather "for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect".
Einstein dedicated the final thirty years of his life to developing the Unified Field Theory, which was supposed to unify the fundamental forces of nature within a single theoretical framework. Although eventually, he did not succeed in transforming his ideas into a solid theory, his efforts motivated other scholars to search for "a unified theory". His work in this field is one of his most important contributions to the world of science.