Eugen Hersch was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany in 1887 and studied art in Berlin and Italy before establishing a successful portrait practice. In 1939 he fled to England with his wife to escape Nazi persecution, settling in London. After a period of internment, he continued his artistic career in exile, primarily as a painter, portraitist and muralist.
Painter and printmaker, Eugen Hersch was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany, on 21 August 1887. His father, Heinrich, was an academic, playwright and literary translator. Hersch studied at the Berlin Art Academy from 1905–09 and in 1910 won the prestigious Michael Beerschen Stiftung scholarship, awarded annually to two Academy students, one of whom had to be Jewish, which sponsored a year-long trip to Italy, eight months of were to be spent in Rome. Hersch spent two years in Italy (1910–12), afterwards returning to Berlin where he established a successful portrait practice. During the First World War, he served as an Official War Artist and his sitters included President (later Field Marshal) Hindenburg and the composer Engelbert Humperdinck. In 1939 Hersch fled to England with his wife to escape Nazi persecution, settling in London. In 1940, following the outbreak of the Second World War, Hersch was detained as an 'enemy alien' and interned, initially at Huyton Camp in Liverpool. He subsequently joined many other visual artists who were held at Hutchinson Camp, known informally as the 'artists' camp', on the Isle of Man.
Postwar, Hersch exhibited at the annual East End Academy held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery (1946), Royal Society of Portrait Painters (1950s) and the Royal Academy of Arts (1950s–1960s). In addition to portraits, he painted still-lifes, landscapes and figurative works, while his output as a printmaker included etchings and lithographs. His large mural Triptych in Blue was presented to Wandsworth Town Hall in south London 1948 and was on view at Battersea Town Hall from 1975 (it is now in the Berardo Collection in Lisbon, Portugal). His final work, a twelve-painting mural executed in tempera, with each part measuring six by four feet, was entitled A Requiem to Comfort the Bereaved and represented 'the various emotions with which the thought of life ending might be viewed by different types of humanity and by the young and the old' ('A Requiem by Eugen Hersh', The Times, 6 April 1963, p. 4).
Eugen Hersch died in London, England, on 30 September 1967 and is buried in Putney Vale Cemetery. His works, including sketches for A Requiem to Comfort the Bereaved, were posthumously included in the 1990 exhibition Four Exiled Artists: Jacob Bornfriend, Eugen Hersch, Alfred Lomnitz and Else Meidner held at the John Denham Gallery in London, which specialised in presenting the work of often neglected émigré artists. Barry Fealdman, Ben Uri's secretary and exhibition reviewer for the Jewish Chronicle, described Hersch as 'An outstanding draughtsman [who] produced sensitive portraits and figure studies and exquisite landscapes' (Jewish Chronicle, 15 June 1990, p. 13). In 2004, an exhibition entitled Eugen Hersch: Later Life was held at the Berardo Foundation's Quinta da Bacalhoa estate in Setubal, Portugal. In 2009, a self-portrait by Hersch from Ben Uri's collection was included in its Homeless and Hidden – A World Class Collection in Storage show. Archival materials relating to Hersch and his father are held at the Leo Baeck Institute, Center for Jewish History in New York. His work is held in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection (which holds two self-portraits), British Museum, and North Lincolnshire Museums Service.
Eugen Hersch in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Eugen Hersch]
Publications related to [Eugen Hersch] in the Ben Uri Library