meshiksa hasidic roots: Isidor Kaufmann

His paintings caused me to cry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidor_Kaufmann
He was born in 1853 and died in 1921. He is a painter of Jewish themes, and he painted Hasidic theme a lot.

I would love to curate him and, organize an exhibition in the Grand-Palais in Paris. :-)
http://www.grandpalais.fr/visite/en/

Unfortunately, too much light in this place for his precious paintings, and i don't have the money to curate it. :-(
But, let me dream…
He is Jewish, but they don't say if he was Hasidic.
If he was Hasidic, he would be from the Satmar sect or another one. His parents were Hungarian.

My favorites are by order in the post below.
Look at the details of the some of them.
"Child With Lulav", "Portrait of a Boy" look like a photo.
He has shadows under his eyes.
I love how he put his hand on his heart. The silver/gold color of his tallit is amazing.
He is wearing a shtreimel, is he already married? He seems young to be married. :-)

"Man With Fur Hat" has beautiful eyes.
The rendering is so realistic. We can see the same faces in the streets of Brooklyn: fleshy lips, ginger beard, black garb… He has a beautiful face. He seems so serene, Hashem is hidden in his fur hat!
Nothing has changed!

At first, i thought that he only painted men, and i found paintings with women. The Hasidic fashion for women is very different from what we can see these days.
They dress up old fashioned, but that's modern finally when we have a look at these paintings.
The women that he painted come from wealthy family, and he dressed them up for the painting.

I am totally fascinated by these faces, these looks.
The men with peyos have more hair than the ones, so i repeat it once again: let your hair grow, Jewish
people you have beautiful hair.

I don't have the dates for all these paintings, so i don't know if the colors are not boosted on some of them because of the scans or if they belong to the times of his first paintings.

If, by any chance, you know someone who has one of his paintings, invite me to have a look at it! :-)

I will take a plane if you live far away from me.

I am in transit.