Jacob Kramer was born into a Jewish family in Klintsy, Russian Empire (now Klincy, Ukraine) in 1892, and immigrated with them to Leeds as a young boy. A precocious talent at the local art school, Kramer studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London (1913–14), associating with the group of young Anglo-Jewish modernists now known as the Whitechapel Boys, as well as Wyndham Lewis' Blast. He returned to Leeds for the last three decades of his career.
Painter Jacob Kramer was born into an observant Jewish family in Klinsty, then part of the Russian Empire (now Klincy, Ukraine), on 26 December 1892. He later moved with his father, an artist, and his mother, a noted singer, to St Petersburg, at a time of mounting economic deprivation, and religious persecution of Jews. The family immigrated to England, settling in Leeds in 1900, the Kramer family found themselves in impoverished circumstances, typical of many ostjuden migrants arriving in Britain (his father could only find work as a photographic retoucher). Showing an early aptitude for drawing, Kramer regularly sketched his sister, Sarah, often depicting her as a colourful, Augustus John-like gypsy (she subsequently married Kramer's artist peer, Slade School of Fine Art graduate, William Roberts (1895–1980), and moved to London). Kramer studied at Leeds School of Art from 1907, winning several scholarships, where his precocious talent was recognised by the Headmaster, and by Michael Sadler, Vice-Chancellor of Leeds University and noted collector of modern art, who became Kramer's most important patron, encouraging him to apply to the Slade in London. Furthermore, Sadler's collection in his Leeds home introduced Kramer to artworks by many important British and European moderns, including Gauguin, Kandinsky, and German expressionists, Marc and Pechstein. From 1912 Kramer exhibited in group shows in northern public galleries, including Bradford, Doncaster and Leeds.
Supported by the charitable organisation, the Jewish Education Aid Society, Kramer attended the Slade for one academic year (1913-14), bringing him into contact with the group of Anglo-Jewish modernists now known as the 'Whitechapel boys'. They included Mark Gertler and David Bomberg, with whom Kramer exhibited in the ‘Jewish Section’ of the groundbreaking exhibition: Twentieth Century Art: A Review of Modern Movements, held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1914 (the section was selected by Bomberg and American-born sculptor, Jacob Epstein). Despite the outbreak of war, Kramer continued to show in progressive company: with the newly-founded London Group; the New English Art Club; the first Vorticist exhibition at the Dore Galleries (all 1915); the Friday Club at the Alpine Galleries (1916); and the Allied Artists Association (1917). In 1917 a reproduction of his painting The Jew caused controversy in the national press, over its extreme modernism. Kramer also contributed reproductions to new popular literary and art magazines, including Wyndham Lewis’s Blast (War Number, July 1915), Art & Letters, Colour and New Paths (all 1918). He also lectured on the visual arts, convinced of the connection between colour and music, and the importance of expression in an artwork.
Despite an imposing physical presence, Kramer was of a nervous disposition (Epstein described his anxious trembling as he sat to his portrait bust (1921, Tate, Leeds City Art Gallery and Ben Uri Collections)) and, as the First World War progressed, he neither joined the Jewish Battalion nor become an official war artist. Finally, as a Russian, so-called ‘friendly alien’, Kramer was conscripted in the last months of the conflict, as a regimental librarian, a post facilitated by writer and critic, Herbert Read (1893–1968), whom he knew from Leeds and the progressive Leeds Arts Club. Postwar, Kramer anticipated continued success in London – in early 1920 the Leeds Jewish community gifted his most notable modernist painting to date, The Day of Atonement (1919), which presented Jewish religious subjectmatter in a highly reductive modern style, to Leeds Art Gallery, to mark his impending departure for the capital. in 1919 Kramer held his first solo exhibition in London, at the Adelphi Galleries, organised by Frank Rutter, curator at Leeds Art Gallery, and lent works to the Glasgow Society of Artists and Sculptors exhibition, at the McLellan Galleries, Glasgow. A year later, he was included in an unrealised commission scheme, proposed by Sir William Rothenstein (1872–1945, Principal of the Royal College of Art, London), to decorate Leeds Town Hall (with the Nash brothers, Edward Wadsworth and Stanley Spencer, among other artists). There followed a crisis of confidence, and Kramer returned to Leeds, where he became known as a colourful, local character, establishing his own Yorkshire Luncheon Group, and for his distinctive pastel portraits of northern notables and visiting celebrities (including Mahatma Gandhi, National Portrait Gallery, London). He continued to lend work to London exhibitions and to provide images for magazines, such as The New Coterie (November 1925). In 1928 his painting Clay/The Anatomy Lesson, (1928, Leeds Art Gallery) was included in the first London Group retrospective. Kramer also exhibited regularly in Ben Uri's Annual Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists from 1935–50. A major retrospective was held at Leeds Art Gallery in 1960. Jacob Kramer died in Leeds, England on 4 February 1962. Posthumously his work was supported by several commercial galleries in London, including Belgrave and Parkin, and he was included in survey exhibitions of 20th century Jewish artists, in the UK and USA. His works are in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection, the Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art, Leeds Art Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, Tate, and the University of Leeds.
Jacob Kramer in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Jacob Kramer]
Publications related to [Jacob Kramer] in the Ben Uri Library