Maurycy Gottlieb was a Polish painter, who represented Realism movement. Also, he was the most prominent representative of Jewish culture in Poland of the second half of the 19th century.
Background
Maurycy Gottlieb was born on February 21, 1856 in Drohobycz, Austrian Poland (present-day Drohobycz, Ukraine) to a wealthy Jewish family. He was one of eleven children of Isaac Gottlieb and Fanya (Tigerman) Gottlieb. Maurycy’s three brothers were also painters, the most gifted of them was Leopold. Ever since their early years, they were brought up with deep respect for religion and Judaist tradition, and at the same time in the atmosphere of tolerance, openness to the worldview and culture of the non-Jewish members of society.
Education
Maurycy had a passion for drawing already as a child, while middle school studies proved difficult for him — he changed schools in Drohobych and Lviv three times. In 1869, Gottlieb began his studies in the studio of the Lviv painter Michał Godlewski. At the same time, he independently prepared for an exam, allowing him to commence higher studies.
During the period from 1871 to 1873, the painter studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where Karl Mayer and Karl von Blaas were among his mentors. In 1873, Maurycy left for Kraków to study at Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts. At the academy, Gottlieb studied under Jan Matejko and befriended Jacek Malczewski. However, an anti-semitic incident prompted him to leave Kraków after less than a year. He returned to Vienna and from there travelled to Munich in 1875 to study under Karl Piloty and Alexander Wagner.
Career
In his early years, Gottlieb painted historically-themed works about Poland, which demonstrated a clear impact of Matejko, both ideologically and artistically. "Sigismund Augustus and Giżanka" is one of the most renowned of these works. During his time in Vienna, Gottlieb completed one of his most acclaimed works, which strengthened his fame in Europe. It was a painting, inspired by Karl Gutzkow’s drama "Uriel d'Acosta", which showed Uriel and Judith van Straaten – a couple of lovers, caught up in conflicts and religious persecution, whose tragic story became a source of powerful, deeply personal feelings for the young painter.
Between 1877 and 1878, Gottlieb began preparing a series of monumental works on the life of Jesus Christ, showing his teachings, miracles and sacrifice, however not in the context of religious painting genre, but historical one, which preserved a meticulous adherence to the Biblical messages, complemented by familiarity with the painter’s contemporary customs, outfits, architecture and local landscape.
At the beginning of 1878, Maurycy Gottlieb went to Munich for a few months, as he was commissioned by Bruckmann’s publishing house to create a series of illustrations for an exclusive edition of Gotthold Lessing’s dramatic poem "Nathan the Wise". The same year, Gottlieb travelled to Rome. There, he bonded with Henryk Siemiradzki, who took care of the young painter. Enchanted by the city, Maurycy had a strong desire to settle down there permanently. However, when he met Matejko at an official reception in his honour, Gottlieb’s old sentiments for Polish culture came back. Having been cordially invited by his old teacher, in spring 1879, he arrived in Kraków, in order to paint a monumental series of paintings, depicting the history of Jews in Poland under Matejko’s supervision. The same year, the painter died from health complications.
Personality
As a deeply emotional person, Maurycy had very strong feelings about the fatal vulnerability of a man, facing the fate and the world.