Maurycy Gottlieb

Maurycy Gottlieb (born 21 or February 28, 1856 in Drohobytsch, Galicia, † July 17, 1879 in Kraków ) was a Polish painter of Jewish faith. Although he was only 23 years old, he left about 300 pictures, but most of them in an unfinished state.

Life

At the age of 15 he began studying painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, then he went to Krakow, to continue his studies under Jan Matejko. Because of the anti-Semitism of his fellow students, he left Cracow after less than a year and went back to Vienna.

While his early paintings had nationalist Polish subjects, he soon turned to Jewish themes. His parents had non- religious upbringing him in the spirit of the Age of Enlightenment, but he wanted to study its roots in Jewish culture.

At the age of 20 he won the gold medal from a Munich painting competition for the image " Shylock and Jessica ," after a scene from Shakespeare's " The Merchant of Venice". The Portrait of Jessica shows Laura Rosenfeld, Gottlieb wanted to marry. After he was initially accepted, but he was then but rejected what is regarded as the reason for his suicide. When he heard that Laura had married another, he sat out of the cold and died from the effects of hypothermia.

His painting " Jesus preaches in Capernaum " caused a stir, as it taught Jesus, with Beikeles ( sidelocks ) and tallit ( prayer shawl ), depicts a rabbi who fellow Jews.

His younger brother Léopold Gottlieb, also a painter, was born five years after Maurycys death.