Background
Against the will of his father, and thanks to the financial assistance of a doctor, he chose to be an artist. At the age of 15 he began his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków, where he was heavily influenced by the realistic painting of Jan Matejko. After two years of training in Kraków, he continued his studies from 1885-1889 at the Royal Academy of Arts in Munich. In his first major work, "Jeschibah" (1887), he experienced some attention. After an exhibition at the Kunstverein Munich (1889), he showed at the art exhibition in Paris and was awarded a silver medal. In Paris, he completed his artistic training at the Académie Colarossi.
In 1891, Hirszenberg returned to Poland and in 1893 settled back down in his hometown of Łódź. While the images of the early years, like the paintings: Talmudic Studies, Sabbathnachmittag, Uriel Acosta and the Jewish cemetery, a certain kinship with the Jewish genre painting by Leopold Horowitz, Isadore Kaufmann and Maurycy Gottlieb, can be assigned to the later rather the symbolism. Themes of the "tearful" Jewish history came to the fore. Noteworthy are the three most famous pictures of this period: Wandering Jew (1899), Exile (1904) and Czarny Szander / Black Flag (1905). For more than four years he occupied himself with the large painting "The Eternal Jew" before he showed it in 1900 in the Paris Salon. Disappointed by the poor response in Paris and the rejection in Munich and Berlin, he retired for health reasons. In 1901, he went for a year on a trip to Italy. In 1904, Hirszenberg moved to Kraków, from where he emigrated to Palestine (1907). He became a lecturer at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. After a short and intense creative period, he died in 1908 in Jerusalem.