This is the first biography of Gertler to be published for thirty years. It reappraises an extraordinary artist, a figure who fascinated his contemporaries. His is for instance the sinister sculptor of D. H. Lawrence's Women in Love, the dashing Byronic hero of Aldous Huxley's Crome Yellow, and the egotistical writer of Katherine Mansfield's story Je ne parle pas francais. Gertler achieved recognition early, and was admired and encouraged by Walter Sickert, Vanessa Bell, Roger Fry and Henry Moore. He was championed by the flamboyant Lady Ottoline Morrell, and his magnificent, haunting pictures were keenly collected.Yet despite his apparent ease in London society, he himself felt his Jewishness and working-class background to be insuperable barriers, and his artistic ambition gradually alienated him even from the people among whom he'd grown up. He found no happiness and at the age of 47 he committed suicide. A few weeks earlier he had had dinner with Virginia Woolf and had impressed her with his 'fanatical devotion to his art'. On hearing of his death she recorded in her diary that he had been 'perhaps too rigid, too self-centred, too honest and too narrow ... to be content or happy. But with his intellect and interest,' she asked, 'why did the personal life become too painful?That is one of the questions Sarah MacDougall explores in her life of this complex man, whose powerful images, like the Merry-go-round or the Creation of Eve, have lost none of their disturbing eloquence.

Mark Gertler

Arts & Photography

MacDougall, Sarah

Individual Artists

John Murray Pubs Ltd

"Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and his Circle" is the first book for almost 20 years to focus on the visual work of poet-painter Isaac Rosenberg. It is also the first to explore his art in the context of his Whitechapel peers, including painters David Bomberg, Mark Gertler, Jacob Kramer, Bernard Meninsky and Clare Winsten, and the writers John Rodker, Joseph Leftwich and Stephen Winsten. Now regarded as one of the finest war poets of his generation, Rosenberg published only two collections of poetry during his lifetime, all at his own expense. Although he thought of himself as a poet rather than a painter, his work as an artist deserves far greater consideration than it has been given to date. In his art as well as his poetry, Roseberg sought to articulate the ongoing struggle between modernism and tradition, then at the heart of contemporary debate. This book includes photographs of the artist and his contemporaries, reproductions of his drawings, letters and paintings, and written contributions from Rosenberg's biographers and literary critics alongside more art-historical texts. It provides a fascinating document of a lost era.

Whitechapel at War: Isaac Rosenberg and his Circle (Ben Uri)

WILSON, Jean Moorcroft

Williams, Dominic

Liddiard, Jean

Dickson, Rachel

History & Criticism

Lund Humphries

"Forced Journeys" is a study of artists in exile in Britain between about 1933 and 1945. It deals with those artists mostly of German and Austrian descent who fled Nazi persecution, and comprises paintings, prints, sculpture, ceramics and posters by artists such as Kurt Schwitters, Jankel Adler, Hans Feibusch, Hans Schleger and Else and Ludwig Meidner. One of the main subjects is internment, as emigres were automatically interned for some months on their arrival in Britain, however distinguished they might be as artists. Schwitters, for instance, was interned on the Isle of Man, later settling in the Lake District, where he lived until his death in 1948. There are a number of works discussed that relate directly to the experience of internment, including a series of drawings by Fred Uhlman from observation and imagination, verging on the savage in their incisive linearity and satire. The book is valuable in shedding light for the first time on artists' experience of internment, as well as their response to their release and return to Blitz-torn London. Surveys of modern British art, particularly of the critical years between 1933 and 1945, rarely acknowledge the importance of the exile milieu. Rather than ghettoising the contribution of refugee artists, "Forced Journeys" examines the crucial impact of their work on the course of modern art in Britain.

Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain c.1933-45

Black, Jonathan

Gilman, Sander L.

Lloyd, Fran

Vincent, Jutta

Marking the remarkable century of Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, from humble beginnings in London's East End in 1915 to a fully-fledged mainstream art museum, under its banner 'Art, Identity and Migration', this publication vividly illustrates rarely seen masterworks from its collection by some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, including Soutine, Chagall, Auerbach, Bomberg, Kitaj and Kossoff. Further highlights include the 'Whitechapel Boys'; Les Peintres Juifs de L'Ecole de Paris, Official War artists from both conflicts; mid-century émigrés influencing the direction of the arts, and contemporary artists making ground-breaking work across new media. This unique collection, primarily of artists born into the Jewish faith, many shaping modern British, European and American art history, represents a distinct visual survey of artistic and social life in Britain and the cultural heritage of British Jewry. A range of texts provides a fascinating context for a collection born 'Out of Chaos'. Contents: Chairman's Foreword: Out of Chaos: Shaping the future from the past; Introduction to the Ben Uri Collection: A century of engagement with British and European Art Catalogue; 1 Whitechapel Boys; 2 Soutine, Chagall and the School of Paris; 3 Forced Journeys; 4 Postwar; 5 School of London; Chronology of Ben Uri; Notes; Bibliography; Legacy of Teachers.

Out of Chaos: Ben Uri; 100 Years in London

Dickonson, Rachel

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Ben Uri Gallery

Ben Uri Gallery and Museum was founded 100 years ago in July 1915 in Whitechapel in London's East End by Russian-Jewish émigré Lazar Berson and likeminded, mostly émigré, artists and craftsmen, who were unable to access the cultural bastions of the British art establishment. From its inception as an Art Society in 1915, steeped in a vibrant Yiddish culture, to its position today as the only specialist Jewish museum of art in Europe working wholly in the mainstream, Ben Uri's unique international collection has grown to more than 1,300 artworks across a wide range of subjects and media, created by more than 380 artists, primarily (but not exclusively) of Jewish origin and from 35 countries.

Highlights from the Ben Uri Collection (Volume 1)

Sumptuously illustrated with 66 full color and 6 black-and-white illustrations including paintings, drawings and lithographs from both public and private collections, this publication accompanies Ben Uri's first major exhibition on Sir William Rothenstein (1872 1945) and his circle. Spanning six decades of British art, it explores Rothenstein's career and influence within the context of his (mostly younger) contemporaries including Barnett Freedman, Mark Gertler, Eric Kennington, Jacob Kramer, Albert Rutherston and Alfred Wolmark, who were all either directly influenced by or worked alongside him. Contents: 1 Samuel Shaw 'The Ideal behind the Real': William Rothenstein, Alfred Wolmark and the representation of the Whitechapel Jew, c. 1905-08 2 Sarah MacDougall 'Apropos the Younger Generation': William Rothenstein and Mark Gertler 3 Rachel Dickson From Atonement to Public Adornment: Jacob Kramer and William Rothenstein 1911-22 4 Jonathan Black Eric Kennington and William Rothenstein and the landscape of the Western Front, 1917-19 Catalogue of 38 illustrated works with accompanying texts and extra contextual works Timeline; Exhibitions list; Select Bibliography; Artists' biographies; Index; Copyright and credits.

William Rothenstein and his Circle

Shaw, Samuel

•Major new title on acclaimed but neglected early British modernist artist, by two experts in the field •Features both celebrated and lesser-known but important works from public and private lenders •Published to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the artist's death and the first museum retrospective in a decade This new monograph on the important and influential 20th-century British artist David Bomberg (1890-1957) accompanies a major new exhibition curated by the authors, due to open at Pallant House, Chichester (Oct 2017, touring to Laing Gallery, Newcastle and Ben Uri Gallery, London.) The monograph is a comprehensive yet succinct account, providing an informed and accessible overview of Bomberg's career and achievements, combining a biographical narrative with an analytical and interpretative approach. It discusses and illustrates Bomberg's five key periods and motifs including early, experimental modernism pre the First World War; War artist's commissions and immediate postwar works; major Jerusalem landscapes; portraiture, and particularly self-portraiture; and the flowering of his mature landscapes. The book is also notable for its inclusion of new material relating to Bomberg's Jewish background, and its sumptuous illustratrations. Contents: Chapter 1 (1890-1914) A Disturbing Influence; Chapter 2 (1915-20) The War and its Aftermath; Chapter 3 (1921-39) Jerusalem, Spain and England ; Chapter 4 (1939-45) War and Peace; Chapter 5 (1946-57) The Final Year

Bomberg

Russian-American emigre Max Weber (1881-1961) was one of the most influential Modernists in America in the early 20th century. For the first time, this book examines Weber in a European context, highlighting his crucial role in the cross-cultural dialogue between Paris and London and his important influence on the British avant-garde. A series of fascinating illustrated essays explore Weber's connections to Matisse, Picasso and Henri Rousseau, showing how the French artists' influence on him was also transmitted to British artists outside of France who shared a common goal. The writers analyse the artistic and personal relationship between Weber and photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn (both important innovators and disseminators of Modernism), and investigate Weber's participation in the 'nameless' 1913 exhibition in London of works by the Grafton Group, which included Vanessa Bell and Wyndham Lewis.Featuring a number of little-known illustrations and comprehensive, scholarly endmatter, Max Weber: An American Cubist in Paris and London, 1905-15 is an essential reference work for all those interested in the development and dialogues of artistic Modernism.

Max Weber: An American Cubist in Paris and London, 1905-15

This beautifully illustrated catalog accompanied and exhibition at the leading London gallery Piano Nobile, celebrating the achievements of Mart Gertler (1891-1939). It charts Gertler's career from an early British modernist at the close of the Edwardian era through his most radical period during the years of the First World War to the 'return to order' of the 1920s, when Gertler was recognized as a consummate painter with a highly individual vision. Gertler's biographer and cataloger Sarah MacDougall introduces us to celebrated and little-known painting and drawings from a number of private collections. Example of Gertler's experimental figurative work in this period include three of his four boxing studies show together here for the first time and two rarely exhibited drawings for his iconic anti-war painting, Merry-Go-Round (1916), both of which caused an 'outcry' when first exhibited.

Mark Gertler: Works 1912-28

Paul Holberton Publishing

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