Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Clara Klinghoffer artist

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.

Born: 1900 Szerzezec, Polish Galicia, then Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine)

Died: 1970 London, England

Other name/s: Chaje Esther Klingoffer, Clara Esther Klinghoffer


Biography

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 evening of talks on 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.

Related books

  • Sacha Llewellyn, Fifty Work by Fifty British Women Artists 1900 – 1950, exhibition catalogue (England: Empress Litho, 2019)
  • Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall eds., Out of Chaos: Ben Uri 100 Years in London (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2015)
  • Oil Paintings in Public Ownership in Camden (London: The Public Catalogue Foundation, 2013), p. 32
  • Alicia Foster, Tate Women Artists (London: Tate Gallery, 2004), p. 127
  • Monica Bohm-Duchen and Vera Grodzinski, Rubies and Rebels: Jewish Female Identity in Contemporary British Art (London: Lund Humphries, 1996), p. 37-39
  • Walter Schwabe and Julia Weiner eds., Jewish Artists: the Ben Uri Collection - Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 1994), p. 90
  • Alan Windsor, Handbook of Modern British Painting, 1900-1980 (London: Scolar Press, 1992), p. 167
  • 'Clara Klinghoffer', The Times, 2 December 1970, p. 12
  • H. D., 'Clara Klinghoffer', New York Times, 28 February 1958, p. 16
  • 'Clara Klinghoffer', Jewish Chronicle, 15 April 1938, p. 33
  • 'Art Exhibitions. Women's International Art Club', The Times, 23 February 1933, p. 12
  • 'Leicester Galleries', The Times, 11 October 1932, p. 12
  • 'Jewish Art', Jewish Chronicle, 11 November 1932, p. 13
  • ‘British Contemporary Art: Salon Club Gallery’, The Manchester Guardian, 19 September 1931, p. 13
  • K., 'Jewish Artists’ Exhibitions. Rothenstein and Klinghoffer’, Jewish Chronicle, 24 May 1929, p. 12
  • 'Art Exhibitions', The Times, 8 May 1929, p. 14
  • ‘Art of The Day in The London Galleries’, The Sphere, Vol. 104, 27 March 1926, p. 415
  • 'Miss Klinghoffer's Exhibition', Jewish Chronicle, 26 March 1926, p. 12
  • P. G. Konody, 'Art and Artists', The Observer, 12 April 1925, p. 6
  • R H W., 'Exhibitions of the Week', The Athenaeum, 6 August 1920, pp. 184-185
  • 'Clara Klinghoffer', Jewish Chronicle, 30 May 1920, p. 13
  • R.H.W., 'Exhibitions of the Week', The Athenaeum, 28 May 1920, pp. 708-709

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Central School of Arts & Crafts (student)
  • John Cass Institute (student)
  • New English Art Club (member)
  • Slade School of Fine Art (student)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Fifty Works by Fifty British Women Artists, 1900-1950, Liss Llewellyn Fine Art, London (2019)
  • Exodus: Masterworks from the Ben Uri Collection, Bushey Museum (2018)
  • Out of Chaos - Ben Uri: 100 Years in London, Somerset House, London (2015)
  • Art, Identity, Migration: Selections from the Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Gallery (2013)
  • Recent Acquisitions 2001-2006, Ben Uri Gallery - The London Jewish Museum of Art, Boundary Road, London (2006)
  • The Modern and the New: An Examination of the Permanent Collection alongside New Works by Invited British, European and American Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery - Jewish Museum London (2004)
  • New Visions: The Search for Identity, Immigrant Artists in Early Twentieth-century British Art, Doncaster Museum and Art Gallery (2003)
  • Solo exhibition, Bowes Museum, Bernard Castle (1977)
  • Clara Klinghoffer 1900-1970: a Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Lithographs, Belgrave Gallery, St Ives (1976)
  • Solo exhibition, private house, London (1972)
  • Paintings from the Ben Uri Art Gallery, Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Dorset (1970)
  • Festival of Britain, Anglo-Jewish Exhibition 1851-1951, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1951)
  • Women's International Art Club, Suffolk Street Galleries (1939)
  • Solo exhibition, Redfern Gallery (1938)
  • The Nude in British and French Art, Leger Galleries, London (1936)
  • Israel Zangwill Memorial Exhibition, Ben Uri Jewish Art Gallery, Woburn House, London (1935)
  • Annual Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Jewish Art Gallery, Woburn House, London (1935)
  • New English Art Club, Suffolk Street Galleries, London (1934)
  • Paintings and Drawings by Clara Klinghoffer, Leicester Galleries, London (1932)
  • Clara Klinghoffer, Redfern Gallery, London (1932)
  • East End Academy, Whitechapel Art Gallery (1932)
  • Women's International Art Club, Suffolk Street Galleries (1932)
  • British Contemporary Art, Salon Club Art Gallery, Mancherster (1931)
  • Women's International Art Club, Suffolk Street Galleries (1930)
  • Solo exhibition, Redfern Galleries (1929)
  • Solo exhibition, Godfrey Philips Galleries, London (1929)
  • Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities, Whitechapel Art Gallery (1927)
  • Solo exhibition, Redfern Galleries, London (1927, 1926, 1925)
  • Society of Independent Artists, Parson's Showroom (1925)
  • Group Exhibition, Grosvenor Galleries, London (1924)
  • Exhibition of Drawings by Clara Klinghoffer, Leicester Galleries, London (1923)
  • Society of Jewish Artists, Whitechapel Art Gallery (1923)
  • Solo exhibition, Grosvenor Galleries (1922)
  • Drawings and Paintings by Clara Klinghoffer, Hampstead Art Gallery, London (1920)
  • Solo exhibition, Redfern Galleries, London (1919)
  Clara Klinghoffer
   
Ben Uri collection

Clara Klinghoffer in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Clara Klinghoffer]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Clara Klinghoffer] in the Ben Uri Library