Emmanuel Levy was born the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants in Hightown, Manchester, England in 1900 and studied at Manchester School of Art with L. S. Lowry, before moving to St Martin’s School of Art in London. Although he experimented with Cubism and Surrealism, Levy abandoned these styles in favour of naturalism, specialising in figurative work exploring the human condition.
Painter Emmanuel Levy was born to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in Hightown, Manchester, England in 1900. Like his slightly older contemporary, Jacob Kramer, Levy was one of a small cohort of Jewish artists, whose families, fleeing persecution, restrictive legislation and economic hardship, settled in the north of England as part of a wider wave of Jewish migration to Britain at the close of the nineteenth century. Hightown was immortalised by the Jewish writer Louis Golding in his best-selling novel Magnolia Street (1932), which Levy later adapted as a radio play. Levy’s father was the beadle at the Great Synagogue, Cheetham Hill in Manchester and the young Levy attended the local Jews’ Free School, before studying at Manchester School of Art under Adolphe Valette (c. 1918) together with L. S. Lowry (whose portrait he drew), at St Martin’s School of Art in London, and in Paris. He returned to Manchester for his first solo show in 1925. His early work included Jewish subjects, such as the movingThe Mourners (Sitting Shiva)(1928, Ben Uri Collection). Executed in a semi-Cubist manner, it was painted following the death of his father and showed the Jewish ceremony of sitting Shiva in which members of the immediate family gather to mourn for seven days following the burial. In 1928 Levy was appointed a special instructor in life drawing at Manchester University School of Architecture upon the recommendation of Valette, whom he succeeded. He also gave popular public demonstrations in portrait painting. From 1929, for several years, he was Art Critic for Manchester City News and the Evening News and his 60-year career was so closely associated with his native city that Lord Ardwick described him as ‘a Manchester man through and through. But’, he continued, ‘there is nothing provincial or even distinctly English in his work. He is a citizen of the world’ (Out of Chaos, p. 96).
In 1932 Levy was elected a member of the Manchester Academy of Fine Arts. Although he experimented with Cubism and Surrealism, Levy abandoned these styles in favour of naturalism, specialising in figurative work exploring the human condition. His wife, Ursula Leo (1915-1984), one of his pupils and a painter in her own right, was a German-Jewish refugee from Nazism and during the Second World, he painted his powerful Crucifixion (1942), a cri-de-coeur against Jewish persecution under the Nazis in mainland Europe. Levy held six solo exhibitions in Manchester between 1925 and 1963, with further solo shows in London, including at Ben Uri (1953, 1978 and 1989), where his work was also shown from 1935 onwards in numerous group shows. In a review of Ben Uri’s 1953 solo show, the Manchester Guardian art critic Stephen Bone wrote that Levy's portraits ‘show clearly that [he] has what are perhaps the two most essential gifts of a portraitist – he can draw with confidence and lucidity and he has a keen eye for individual character […] in all his work [he] gives an impression of great sincerity and artistic integrity (Bone 1953, p. 5). The Jewish Chronicle praised his vigorous brushwork as well as his sense of colour and volume. Retrospectives were held at Salford City Art Gallery (1948), Fieldborne Galleries, London (1976) and Stockport Art Gallery (1982). Emmanuel Levy died in London, England in 1986. His work is represented in UK Collections including the Ben Uri Collection, National Portrait Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, Salford Museum and Art Gallery and the Whitworth. In 2014 Ben Uri Gallery curated a posthumous retrospective, Made in Manchester: Emmanuel Levy, at the Manchester Jewish Museum.
Emmanuel Levy in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Emmanuel Levy]
Publications related to [Emmanuel Levy] in the Ben Uri Library