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Lot Essay
Poet and painter Isaac Rosenberg captured his own image several times throughout his short life, and his self-portraits hang in both the National Portrait Gallery and Tate, London. Known to us now primarily as a war poet, whose talent was brutally halted when he was killed in action near Arras on 1 April 1918, Rosenberg’s enrolment at the Slade School of Art in 1911 also places him at the centre of British art at that time.
Rosenberg was born in Bristol in 1890 into a working class Jewish family, who had emigrated from Lithuania three years previously. In 1897 they moved to the East End of London, where he attended school in Whitechapel and subsequently Stepney. At the age of 14 he left school to begin an apprenticeship at an engravers firm on Fleet Street, and during that period he attended evening classes at Birbeck College of Art in Chancery Lane. There he concentrated on the disciplines of the human face and form, a subject which he would continue to focus on in both his art and poetry.
By 1911 he had achieved his ambition to study at the Slade School of Art; at the forefront of British art, the Slade’s traditional yet forward-looking principles opened up many possibilities for Rosenberg, and he flourished alongside his contemporaries David Bomberg, Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, Christopher Nevinson and Stanley Spencer. A photograph taken in 1912 captures these young Slade students posing after a picnic, with Rosenberg kneeling to the left of the group, slightly apart from them. A description of Rosenberg by his friend Joseph Leftwich supports the image of this slightly solitary figure, as having a ‘strange awkward earnestness and single-mindedness’ (quoted in J. Cohen, Journey to the Trenches: The Life of Isaac Rosenberg, 1890-1918, London, 1975, p. 39).
Rosenberg painted this self-portrait during his stay with his sister in Cape Town. He moved there in June 1914 to recuperate from chronic bronchitis, and by October 1915 had signed up for army service.
Rosenberg's 1910 pencil drawing, Self-portrait, sold in these Rooms for £84,100 in June 2015.
Rosenberg was born in Bristol in 1890 into a working class Jewish family, who had emigrated from Lithuania three years previously. In 1897 they moved to the East End of London, where he attended school in Whitechapel and subsequently Stepney. At the age of 14 he left school to begin an apprenticeship at an engravers firm on Fleet Street, and during that period he attended evening classes at Birbeck College of Art in Chancery Lane. There he concentrated on the disciplines of the human face and form, a subject which he would continue to focus on in both his art and poetry.
By 1911 he had achieved his ambition to study at the Slade School of Art; at the forefront of British art, the Slade’s traditional yet forward-looking principles opened up many possibilities for Rosenberg, and he flourished alongside his contemporaries David Bomberg, Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, Christopher Nevinson and Stanley Spencer. A photograph taken in 1912 captures these young Slade students posing after a picnic, with Rosenberg kneeling to the left of the group, slightly apart from them. A description of Rosenberg by his friend Joseph Leftwich supports the image of this slightly solitary figure, as having a ‘strange awkward earnestness and single-mindedness’ (quoted in J. Cohen, Journey to the Trenches: The Life of Isaac Rosenberg, 1890-1918, London, 1975, p. 39).
Rosenberg painted this self-portrait during his stay with his sister in Cape Town. He moved there in June 1914 to recuperate from chronic bronchitis, and by October 1915 had signed up for army service.
Rosenberg's 1910 pencil drawing, Self-portrait, sold in these Rooms for £84,100 in June 2015.