Clara Klinghoffer was born to Polish-Jewish parents in Szerzezec, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Lviv, Ukraine) in 1900. She grew up in London's East End, taking art classes at the John Cass Institute in Aldgate. Holding her first exhibition aged 19, she quickly established a reputation as the new ‘girl genius’, earning a coveted place to study at the progressive Slade School of Fine Art. Her early drawings, often studies of women and children, were frequently compared in the press to those of Raphael and Leonardo.
Painter and draughtswoman Clara Klinghoffer was born to Polish-Jewish parents in Szerzezec, a village near Lemberg (now Lviv) on 18 May 1900, in the contested region that was once Poland, at the time of her birth was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now in Ukraine. Her parents immigrated to England in 1903, settling first in Manchester and then in London's East End, where her father worked in the tailoring business and established a shop. She took art classes at the John Cass Institute in Aldgate, supported by her family who were not well-off but recognised her precocious talent. Klinghoffer held her first exhibition in 1920 at the Hampstead Gallery. The Jewish Chronicle praised her ‘peculiar sense of colour’, her ‘charming’ spontaneity, adding that: ‘Her drawings are very beautiful […] one feels how very much she has been influenced by the old masters […] and yet her outlook is completely modern' (JC 1920, p. 12). Klinghoffer quickly established a reputation as the new ‘girl genius’, earning a coveted place to study at the progressive Slade School of Fine Art (1919–21) for two years. She held solo exhibitions in prestigious London galleries, including the Leicester Galleries (1923, 1932), Redfern Galleries (six times from 1919 until 1938) and Grosvenor Galleries (1922, 1924). In a review of her 1926 Redfern Gallery exhibition The Sphere noted that her work ‘reveals an artist of great subtlety. Remarkable results are obtained with a very restrained use of material, as is evident in her Madonna; another study, entitled Rachel is particularly deserving of notice. […] Students of modern art should not miss the work of this young artists (The Sphere 1926, p. 415). Klinghoffer’s work was heavily influenced by the High Renaissance artists so admired by her teacher, Henry Tonks. Indeed, in 1937 Mary Chamot wrote in Modern Painting in England that Klinghoffer’s drawings 'were comparable to the great Italian masters' (Liss Llewellyn), while the press often likened her studies of women and children to those of Raphael, Leonardo, Rembrandt and Watteau.
Klinghoffer herself can claim to being a later ‘Whitechapel Girl’. She lived locally in Hackney until 1927, showing at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in both the Society of Jewish Artists (1923) and the Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities (1927). She moved within East End Jewish and Yiddish social, literary and artistic circles, associating with a number of the local Anglo-Jewish 'Whitechapel Boys', including David Bomberg and Jacob Kramer, and was championed by painters, Alfred Wolmark and Bernard Meninsky. Further aligning with her Jewish heritage, Klinghoffer's painting The Girl in the Green Sari was acquired by Ben Uri in 1935, after which it featured regularly in the gallery's exhibition programme, including in the Festival of Britain: Anglo-Jewish Exhibition, 1851-1951, Art Section, Portman Street (1951) and the Tercentenary Exhibition of Contemporary Anglo-Jewish Artists (1956). Jewish émigré sculptor Jacob Epstein, associated with Whitechapel and with Ben Uri, described her as ‘an artist of great talent, a painter of the first order. Her understanding of form places her in the very first rank of draughtsmen in the world’ (artist’s website). Klinghoffer’s sister, Rose, also sat for them both. Klinghoffer produced portraits of many prominent personalities, among them Vivien Leigh as Cleopatra; polymath and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Albert Schweitzer; Sarah Churchill; and Danish explorer and anthropologist, Peter Freuchen. In 1927 she married the Dutch journalist Joop Stoppelman and they moved to Holland with their daughter two years later.
In 1939, discovering Nazi spies had been planted in the household staff and aware that the invasion of Holland was imminent, the family returned to London briefly before departing for the USA. Before leaving, their household furniture and some of her artworks were stored in a Haarlem warehouse and were later looted by the Nazis. Klinghoffer subsequently split her life between London and New York, exhibiting with limited success in America during the 1950s and 1960s, her highly polished figurative works defiantly at odds with the prevailing trend towards Abstract Expressionism. Clara Klinghoffer died in London, England on 18 April 1970. In 1972 her husband donated a large group of her drawings to the British Museum. Her work is represented in numerous UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, British Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum and Tate. In 1976 a retrospective was held at the Belgrave Gallery, St. Ives. In 1997 Ben Uri acquired her portrait of fellow artist, Orovida Pissarro. More recently, her work was included in Fifty Works by Fifty British Women Artists, 1900-1950, Liss Llewellyn Fine Art, London (2019) and Out of Chaos - Ben Uri: 100 Years in London, Somerset House (2015). An online talk devoted to Klinghoffer’s life and career was organised by Ognisko Polskie, London in 2020, as part of a broader series of events focusing on Polish female artists of the 20th century.
Clara Klinghoffer in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Clara Klinghoffer]
Publications related to [Clara Klinghoffer] in the Ben Uri Library