William ROTHENSTEIN
Aliens at prayer
1905
Artwork Details
Inscription
inscribed in black paint l.c.l.: W. R. 1905
Accession Number
261-2
Department
International Painting
This digital record has been made available on NGV Collection Online through the generous support of Digitisation Champion Ms Carol Grigor through Metal Manufactures Limited
Subjects (general)
Human Figures
Subjects (specific)
beards immigrants Jewish (culture or style) men (male humans) shawls skullcaps (caps) tallitim yarmulkes
Provenance
Purchased from the artist, on the advice of George Clausen, for the Felton Bequest, 1906.
Frame
Original, maker unknown
Essay
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries anti-Jewish pogroms in Russia led to the flight of some two million Jewish people from the Russian Empire. Around 150,000 Jewish refugees settled in Britain between 1881 and 1914.1Helena Wray, ‘The Aliens Act 1905 and the immigration dilemma’, Journal of Law and Society, vol. 33, no. 2, Jun. 2006, p. 308. Many of these refugees settled in East London, an area plagued by poverty and overcrowding, where over time the subsequent competition for employment and housing led to a rise in anti-Semitism and a call for restrictions upon future emigration from Eastern Europe. The Aliens Act of 1905 subjected immigrants to Great Britain to stricter inspection by customs officers and medical personnel, who were ‘directed to reject lunatics, idiots, and persons suffering from any disease or infirmity which is likely to make them a charge upon the rates’.2‘The Aliens Act’, The British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 2356, 24 Feb. 1906, p. 435. Greeting the introduction of the Act with approval, the British Medical Journal argued that
alien immigration has been directed and controlled by the Government of every country but our own, and a selective power has been acquired by shipping companies catering for America, which results in the ear-marking of all that is good in the alien for America and leaves the bad for the only country without restrictions. Thus the class of aliens who have ousted sections of our native population and forced them into already overcrowded neighbourhoods has been a class selected as fit for shipment to England on account of their unfitness for any other country.3 ibid.
This was the climate in which William Rothenstein painted Aliens at prayer, 1905, one of a series of eight paintings depicting Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe. Rothenstein recalled how in 1904:
Having business in the city with a solicitor, a brother of Solomon J. Solomon, and on his asking whether I chanced to know the [Machzike Hadath] Spitalfields Synagogue, in Brick Lane (a curious sight, he assured me, well worth seeing), I accompanied him there. My surprise was great to find the place crowded with Jews draped in praying shawls; while in a dark-panelled room sat old, bearded men with strange side-locks, bending over great books and rocking their bodies as they read; others stood, muttering Hebrew prayers, their faces to the wall enveloped from head to foot in black bordered shawls. Here were subjects Rembrandt would have painted – had, indeed, painted – the like of which I never thought to have seen in London. I was very much excited; why had no one told me of this wonderful place?4 William Rothenstein, Men and Memories. Recollections of William Rothenstein 1900–1922, Faber & Faber, London, 1932, p. 35.
At first greeted with suspicion by these immigrants, Rothenstein eventually persuaded a handful to sit for him, inspired by both their exotic appearance and their social plight:
The orthodox Jews from Russia and Galicia never shave, and some of the younger men put me in mind of portraits of Titian; for beards give breadth and radiance to a face. The old grey-bearded men, noble in mien if ignoble in dress, wear the pathetic look of Rembrandt’s rabbis. It was the time of the Russian pogroms and my heart went out to these men of a despised race, from which I too had sprung, though regarded as a stranger among them.5ibid. p. 36.
Commenting on the publicity surrounding these ‘alien’ immigrants at this time, as well as exploring his own Jewish heritage, Rothenstein exhibited his Spitalfields paintings at a number of galleries in London. Exposition of the law (date unknown) was shown with the New English Art Club in 1905.6‘The new English art club’, The Times, 14 Oct. 1905, p. 7. Another two paintings from this series, Jews mourning in a synagogue, 1906 (Tate, London), and An exposition of the Talmud, 1904 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), were included in the Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities held at London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1906.7‘Exhibition of Jewish art and antiquities’, The Times, 10 Nov. 1906, p. 17.
Aliens at Prayer, depicting three sorrowful Jewish elders wearing striped tallit gadol prayer shawls over their shoulders, was exhibited in Thomas Agnew’s exhibition in London Some Examples of Independent Art of Today, English, Scottish, and Irish in 1906, where it received a mostly positive reception by art critics. The Manchester press argued that:
Will Rothenstein is to be congratulated on a splendid achievement in ‘Aliens at Prayer’. Here there is no compromise. He has represented magnificent examples of the chosen race, and dealt with them with extraordinary insight and pathos.8‘Independent art. At Messrs. Agnew’s’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 10 Feb. 1906, p. 6.
The Art Journal (1906) was explicit in its praise of the work:
Among the pictures of real importance were Mr Will Rothenstein’s deeply-sought ‘Aliens at Prayer’, the best thing he has given us.9‘London exhibitions’, The Art Journal, Apr. 1906, p. 118.
Also hailing it a ‘magnificent work’, Robert Ross in The Academy (1906) argued that:
For mere painting this is the picture of all others to study, not so much as a striking example of an artist, but as a type of art so misunderstood and neglected.10Robert Ross, ‘Non angeli sed angli’, The Academy, 1906, in Frank Rutter, Art in My Time, Rich & Cowan, London, 1933, pp. 128–9.
The Times (1906), however, felt that ‘it is a careful study of the Jewish character, but is somewhat prosaic in treatment – wanting, in fact, in … passion’.11‘Independent art’, The Times, 10 Feb. 1906, p. 6. While Bernhard Sickert expressed his slight disappointment in the Burlington Magazine (1906):
Mr Will Rothenstein’s Aliens at Prayer, fine as it is, does not quite reach the level of the picture dealing with the same subject at the Alpine Club last winter; or perhaps I am merely getting a little tired. I hope that Mr Rothenstein will soon work another vein with equal success.12Bernhard Sickert, ‘Independent art of to-day’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 8, no. 36, Mar. 1906, p. 384.
Some years later, The Studio (1910) dubbed the painting a ‘remarkable picture’.13James Bolivar Manson, ‘The paintings of Mr William Rothenstein’, The Studio, vol. 50, 1910, p. 42.
Aliens at prayer was recommended from the Agnew’s show for acquisition by the Royal Academy, London, under the terms of its Chantrey Bequest that required paintings and sculptures be made in Britain. Recent controversy about the selections made by the Bequest’s advisers, begun by the art critic D. S. MacColl in 1903, saw this selection overturned. Rothenstein recalled the events in this manner:
Owing to MacColl’s attack on the administration of the Chantrey Bequest, exhibitions other than the Academy were now visited, for the purpose of the Bequest, by members of the Royal Academy Council, and my canvas, a study of three Jews in a synagogue, was recommended by [George] Clausen for purchase. This was, I think, the first work thus proposed outside the Academy. Clausen was keen his selection should be accepted … But the picture was not accepted by the Council. One of my models had a maimed finger, and [President of the Royal Academy, Sir Edward] Poynter (so Clausen told me) pointed to the hand as a piece of bad drawing. Clausen was then buying for Australia, and under the terms of the Fenton [sic] Bequest he bought my painting for the National Gallery of Melbourne.14Rothenstein, p. 92.
The model with the maimed finger is the Jewish elder in the foreground of Aliens at prayer, who is missing the first digit of the index finger on his right hand. His whole hand is swollen and misshapen, perhaps from arthritis or edema.
Noting the acquisition of this painting for the NGV at the time, The Magazine of Fine Arts (1906) commented that ‘the National Gallery in Melbourne will soon contain a more representative collection of modern English art than any public gallery in London’.15Untitled news excerpt, The Magazine of Fine Arts, vol. 2, no. 9, Jul. 1906, p. 186. Citing Aliens at prayer as a work ‘which the Council of the Academy had the unwisdom to reject’, The Art Journal (1906) reminded its readers that ‘At the time of its exhibition in Bond Street we directed attention to the grave, authoritative beauty of Mr Rothenstein’s work, which should not have been allowed to go out of the country’.16‘National Gallery of Australia, Melbourne’, The Art Journal, Nov. 1906, p. 334.
In Melbourne, the local press greeted Clauson’s acquisition of Aliens at prayer by quoting excitedly from the British press. Victoria’s Jewish Herald (1906) cited an article by art critic Marion H. Spielmann, who in London’s Jewish World had noted how in Rothenstein’s painting
the three figures face the spectator – the white-bearded man on the front bench, the two others behind, the very personification of faith, piety and dignity, compelling respect not only for their devotion but for their poverty. There is here some of the conviction which Rembrandt threw into his pictures of this class.17‘Notes and news’, Jewish Herald (Melbourne), 24 Aug. 1906, p. 11.
While The Herald (1906) printed verbatim the following notice from the London’s Daily Mail:
Mr Will Rothenstein’s ‘Aliens at Prayer’ [is] a big, penetrative achievement, which justly attracted attention when it was exhibited in Bond Street a few months ago. The picture, of three grave-faced Israelites, in blue and white prayer shawls, is an earnest, single-minded effort to apprehend and express the dignity, the character, the potency of the alien Jew, in contact with the ancient tradition which, in whatever land of exile, is the source of his spiritual freedom. Mr Rothenstein was imaginatively moved and convinced, hence the searching integrity of his observation. We cannot but regret that the ‘Aliens at Prayer’ does not go to the Tate Gallery. England’s loss is Melbourne’s gain.18‘Aliens at prayer’, The Herald, 26 Jul. 1906, p. 2.
Ted Gott, Senior Curator, International Art, National Gallery of Victoria
Notes
Helena Wray, ‘The Aliens Act 1905 and the immigration dilemma’, Journal of Law and Society, vol. 33, no. 2, Jun. 2006, p. 308.
‘The Aliens Act’, The British Medical Journal, vol. 1, no. 2356, 24 Feb. 1906, p. 435.
ibid.
William Rothenstein, Men and Memories. Recollections of William Rothenstein 1900–1922, Faber & Faber, London, 1932, p. 35.
ibid. p. 36.
‘The new English art club’, The Times, 14 Oct. 1905, p. 7.
‘Exhibition of Jewish art and antiquities’, The Times, 10 Nov. 1906, p. 17.
‘Independent art. At Messrs. Agnew’s’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 10 Feb. 1906, p. 6.
‘London exhibitions’, The Art Journal, Apr. 1906, p. 118.
Robert Ross, ‘Non angeli sed angli’, The Academy, 1906, in Frank Rutter, Art in My Time, Rich & Cowan, London, 1933, pp. 128–9.
‘Independent art’, The Times, 10 Feb. 1906, p. 6.
Bernhard Sickert, ‘Independent art of to-day’, The Burlington Magazine, vol. 8, no. 36, Mar. 1906, p. 384.
James Bolivar Manson, ‘The paintings of Mr William Rothenstein’, The Studio, vol. 50, 1910, p. 42.
Rothenstein,p. 92.
Untitled news excerpt, The Magazine of Fine Arts, vol. 2, no. 9, Jul. 1906, p. 186.
‘National Gallery of Australia, Melbourne’, The Art Journal, Nov. 1906, p. 334.
‘Notes and news’, Jewish Herald (Melbourne), 24 Aug. 1906, p. 11.
‘Aliens at prayer’, The Herald, 26 Jul. 1906, p. 2.
Further reading
Manson, J. B., ‘The paintings of Mr William Rothenstein’, The Studio, vol. 50, 1910, pp. 37–46.
Rothenstein, William, Men and Memories. Recollections of William Rothenstein 1872–1900, Faber & Faber, London, 1931.
Rothenstein, William, Men and Memories: Recollections of William Rothenstein 1900–1922, Faber & Faber, London, 1932.
Speaight, Robert, William Rothenstein: The Portrait of an Artist in His Time, Eyre &
Spottiswoode, London, 1962.
Thompson, John M. A., Sir William Rothenstein, 1872–1945: A Centenary Exhibition, Bradford City Art Galleries & Museums, 1972.
Conservation
Rothenstein rented a room in London’s Spital Square for three years to study and sketch the Jews attending the nearby synagogue after his first visit there in 1904. This oil-on-canvas painting is typical in style and technique to the others he produced during this period, which were praised for their dignified and earnest expression of the sombre piety of their subjects. Rothenstein uses a muted palette with soft light and an uncluttered composition to focus on the models’ expressions through their faces and hands.
Aliens at prayer, 1905, is painted on a pre-primed canvasA large piece of canvas that has the priming applied before cutting to size and stretching. This could be completed in the artist’s studio and, from the late nineteenth century, was often carried out by commercial manufacturers. support of a standard ‘three-quarter-length’ (or traditional half-length) size, 40 x 50 inches (127 x 101.6 cm). Two canvas stampsA stamp applied to the support verso by the colourman who prepared it. on the reverse identify the supplier, Jason Newman, a long-established and reputable art supplier in Soho Square, London (see below). Rothenstein’s Portrait of William Michael Rosetti, 1909, now in the National Portrait Gallery, London, was also painted on one of Newman’s canvases, as were several of his contemporaries’ works.1For more examples of paintings on Newman’s canvases, see the NGV’s Artists’ Colourmen database: <www.ngv.vic.gov.au/explore/collection/conservation/colourmen>. For a history of James Newman as a supplier, see The National Portrait Gallery, London’s online directory of British Artists’ Suppliers: <www.npg.org.uk/research/programmes/directory-of-suppliers>. The canvas came from the supplier with a white priming layerA layer(s) of opaque paint applied to a support to provide suitable colour, texture and absorbency on which to paint. Also called priming or preparatory layers., and Rothenstein applied a middle grey ground layer over the canvas before painting this composition. This preparation contributed to the grave atmosphere of the final painting by reducing the overall luminosity and imparting a cool tonality.
The paint has a thick and dry appearance, retaining the bristle marks of the stiff brushes Rothenstein used to apply it (see below). It is possible Rothenstein restricted or eliminated the use of turpentine, a solvent used to thin oil paints and improve their flow for application. In 1921 the NGV contacted Rothenstein regarding his technique for his later painting, An artist in France, 1918 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne), when it was being considered for acquisition. The artist responded:
paint is apt to darken and crack if a medium like turpentine be used … I believe that pure pigment, put on with the stiff white I employ, remains decently pure. The more white the material to be interpreted needs, the rougher does the surface become.2 Dossier file for William Rothenstein, An artist in France, 1918, National Gallery of Victoria.
This is evident in the technique of An artist in France, where the x-radiographThe image obtained by exposing an object to x-rays and recording the transmitted radiation either on film or digitally. This can reveal information not visible to the naked eye, including compositional changes and damages. suggests lead whiteA very common white pigment used from antiquity until the twentieth century, when it was replaced by zinc and titanium white due to its poisonous properties. Comprising basic lead carbonate, the bright, opaque pigment acts as a siccative when used with oil, speeding up the drying process. is used extensively throughout the composition and a distinctive rough texture is present overall (see below).
Without the addition of turpentineThe steam distillate of coniferous tree resin used to thin oil paint, as a solvent for varnishes, and to clean paint brushes. certain tube paints can be difficult to control and to spread uniformly, which can be particularly true of white paints. In Aliens at prayer, this same distinctive rough texture is present in areas of highlights where more lead white is present, where the light, which emanates from the right, hits the sides of the figures’ faces, shoulders and hands (see below).
Elsewhere, the paint still has a thick and solid appearance, with visible brushstrokes and a little blending, though it is flat and lacks the impasto of the highlights. The correlation between highlights and textured impasto creates an interesting impression that the light ripples and shimmers on the surfaces it falls on. Aliens at prayer was painted thirteen years before An artist in France and may represent an early iteration of the practice of reducing or eliminating the use of turpentine as Rothenstein describes. This is not evident in his earlier works, such as Portrait of my Parents, 1900 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne).
Rothenstein said in the same letter that ‘to get essential power direct touch is needed, that is, a direct stroke without rubbing paint in’. This rough texture of the stiff paint as it leaves the brush serves to provide the immediacy Rothenstein would later state was his aim.
Rothenstein recalls in his memoir that one of the hands of the central figure was criticised as being ‘a piece of bad drawing’ by a member of the Council of the Royal Academy, and it was ultimately rejected for the Chantrey Bequest in 1906 (see essay above for full text).3William Rothenstein, Men and Memories. Recollections of William Rothenstein 1872–1900, Faber & Faber, London, 1932, p. 92. According to the artist this was a misinterpretation of his faithful rendering of the maimed finger of one of his sitters. This figure’s hands were, in fact, one of the areas of the composition Rothenstein had paid great attention to. The x-radiograph reveals Rothenstein at first painted the seated figure’s hands around 10 cm higher than the current position and subsequently repositioned them (see below).
Rothenstein produced several sketches from his time spent with models in Spitalfields, though no underdrawing or transfer technique is evident in this painting. These sketches may have provided a starting point for this painting, but the shift of the central figure’s hands and several other compositional details were worked out during the painting process. Several other minor changes and adjustments to the central and right figures are visible in x-radiography. The torso of the central figure was also lowered and the folds of his prayer shawl simplified. The shawl of the figure on the right was also repainted to flatten the drapery and eliminate folds (see below). There are large mechanical cracksRefers to the cracks that form after the paint has cured as a result of physical forces. in the upper centre that reveal flesh-coloured paint layers below. There appears to be yet another compositional change here, but it is unclear from the x-radiograph if this was once part of a figure or object, or a change to the background colour. Several of these adjustments result in reduced detail and movement, so likely amplified the sense of restraint and gravity of the overall composition.
The painting was acquired by the NGV in 1906, the year after it was painted. There is no physical or documentary evidence the painting has ever undergone major restoration. The paint texture, which can be damaged by liningRefers to the process of adhering an auxiliary canvas to the original canvas support to provide structural reinforcement. or overcleaning,When the act of cleaning an artwork using chemical or physical means results in damage to original material. is well preserved. There is a selective varnish,When varnish is not applied in an even layer, but to localised areas as a means of selectively controlling gloss levels. likely applied by Rothenstein to control the variation in gloss and saturation across the composition. With age the varnish has discoloured to a yellow-brown in places and now appears patchy because of its varying thicknesses (see below). This poses a challenging ethical problem when considering conservation treatment, as this current appearance was not the artist’s original intent, yet the varied application completed by Rothenstein would be lost if the varnish were to be removed.
Caitlin Breare, Conservator of Paintings, National Gallery of Victoria