Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1862 Odessa, Russian Empire (now Ukraine)

Died: 1945 Oxford, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1938

Other name/s: Yitzhok-Leib Pasternak, Isaak Iosifovich Pasternak, Leonid Pasternac, Leonid Pasternack

Biography

Painter Leonid Pasternak (né Yitzhok-Leib Pasternak) was born into a poor Jewish family on 4 April 1862 in Odessa, Russia (now southern Ukraine). He initially studied medicine and law in Odessa and Moscow, but subsequently dedicated himself to art and enrolled at the Odessa Drawing School, then at the Munich Academy of Art (1882–86). He was first acclaimed in Russia for his painting A Letter from Home (1889), purchased by Pavel Tretyakov, for what in 1892 became the renowned Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and he mixed with a circle of important painters, including Valentin Serov, Isaac Levitan and Mikhail Nesterov. Pasternak was also a co-founder of the Union of Russian Artists. In 1889, he married Rosalia Kaufmann, a gifted pianist, and settled in Moscow. The couple had four children, including the future writer and Nobel Prize laureate, Boris Pasternak. From 1894–1921, Pasternak taught at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture; his painting Students Before the Examination was exhibited at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900 and acquired by the Musée du Luxembourg (now Musée d’Orsay). Around this time, Pasternak met the writer Leo Tolstoy, who invited him to illustrate his work. Pasternak also made a large number of drawings of Tolstoy and his family, and was invited by Tolstoy's widow to make a final deathbed drawing of the writer in 1910. Pasternak achieved particular acclaim for his portraits of contemporaries, including Maxim Gorky, Rainer Maria Rilke, Fedor Chaliapin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Albert Einstein. In 1917, following the Russian Revolution, he spent a year in Germany, returning to Russia in 1918.

In 1921, Pasternak, his wife and two daughters, left Moscow for Germany for an eye operation; choosing not to return, he settled in Berlin, mixing with prominent artists, Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth and Hermann Struck, as well as fellow Russian-Jewish émigrés. Pasternak participated in the Berlin Secession exhibitions and held two solo exhibitions at Galerie Victor Hartberg (1927 and 1931). A substantial monograph was published in Berlin in 1932; most of the copies were destroyed in the Nazi book burnings of 1933. Under the Nazi regime, Pasternak’s works were removed from the walls of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry (where his daughter Lydia was a postgraduate biochemist) in Munich, and in 1937, a planned exhibition of his works to celebrate his 75th birthday, was cancelled.

In 1938, Pasternak fled to England with his wife, initially settling in London – where a reception was hosted for him at Ben Uri in 1938. (Curiously, a work by Pasternak (no first name given) of Oriental Jewish Women was included in Ben Uri's 1946 Exhibition of Subjects of Jewish Interest: Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings.) This difficult period of exile was enlivened by work, the company of children and grandchildren, and by a few close friends from Russia and Germany. Among his new acquaintances was Arthur M. Hind, artist and the director of the Print Room at the British Museum, for whom Pasternak completed a pencil portrait. Rosalia died of a stroke in 1939, deeply affecting her husband. Just before she died, they had plans to return to Moscow and discussed it at the Soviet Embassy in London (Buckman 1974, p. 78). In poor health, Pasternak moved to the home of his daughter Lydia (who had married the English psychiatrist Eliot Trevor Oakeshott Slater and relocated to England), a neo-Georgian terrace at 20 Park Town, Oxford, which also housed numerous refugees, and where he spent his final years. Pasternak, nevertheless, continued his work. He finished various pieces, including a drawing of Gilbert Slater, the head of Ruskin College, as well as oil portraits and large historical compositions, such as Bach and Frederick the Great, The Young Mendelssohn, and Pushkin with His Nurse. He was also in talks about a potential exhibition in England, but he felt it would be better to delay it until after the war.

Pasternak remained dedicated to his art until the end of his life, with a portrait of Lenin the final piece on which he was working. His granddaughter, Ann Pasternak Slater, recalls the Oxford house 'crammed with furniture, pictures on the walls, pictures stacked in corners, an easel, brushes, chaotic piles of papers […]' (Guardian 1999). Today the house contains a museum devoted to his work. Posthumous exhibitions, organised by his daughters, Lydia and Josephine, were held at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and Pushkin House, Holborn, London, in 1958. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of Pasternak's birth in 1962, exhibitions were held at the Herbert Gallery and Museum, Coventry, and Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. Selling exhibitions were held in Bond Street, in 1974 and in 1983 (the latter at Wylma Wayne Fine Art). In the UK public domain, Pasternak's work is represented in the collections of the Ashmolean, Tate and V&A, among others.

Related books

Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
Julia Weiner, Moscow on Thames, Jewish Chronicle, 28 May 1999, p. 36
Rimgaila Salys, Leonid Pasternak, The Russian Years, 1875–1921: A Critical Study and Catalogue, 2 Vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
Wendy Salmond, 'Leonid Pasternak: Autobiographical Fragments', Experiment: A Journal of Russian Culture, Vol. 1, 1995, pp. 35-44
Drawings by Leonid Pasternak (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 1990)
Leonid Pasternak 1862–1945: Exhibition of Oil Paintings, Pastels and Drawings (Tel-Aviv: Ziv Noam Art Gallery, 1984)
Leonid Pasternak 1862–1945 (Oxford: Museum of Modern Art, 1982)
Leonid Pasternak, The Memoirs of Leonid Pasternak (London: Quartet Books, 1982)
Josephine Pasternak, 'Pasternak in Oxford', Oxford Art Journal, No. 1, 1978, pp. 19-22
Leonid Pasternak 1862–1945 (St Andrews: Crawford Centre for the Arts, 1978)
David Buckman, Leonid Pasternak: A Russian Impressionist (London: Maltzahn Gallery, 1974)
Larissa Salmina-Haskell, Catalogue of Russian Drawings (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1972)
Douglas Wollen, 'Pasternak's Pictures', The Times, 19 April 1969, p. 21
Leonid Pasternak: A Centenary Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings (Coventry: Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, 1962)
George Butcher, 'Review: Leonid Pasternak', The Guardian, 17 October 1962, p. 9
'Coventry Exhibition by Soviet Artist', Coventry Evening Telegraph, 17 September 1962, p. 5
John Russell, 'Pasternak', The Studio, Vol. 161, 1961, pp. 98-101
'Hoard of Pasternak Work at Oxford', Coventry Evening Telegraph, 4 December 1958, p. 10
'Leonid Pasternak: Hundreds of Unlisted Pictures', The Manchester Guardian, 20 November 1958, p. 5
'Oxford Tribute to a Russian Painter', The Times, 14 April 1958, p. 3
Memorial Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Leonid Pasternak. 1862–1945 (Oxford: Asmolean Museum, 1958)
'Obituary', Jewish Chronicle, 20 July 1945, p. 14

Public collections

Selected exhibitions

Leonid Pasternak in Russia and Germany, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (2001)
The Paintings of Leonid Pasternak, Ashmolean Museum (1999)
Drawings by Leonid Pasternak, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1990)
100 Years of Russian Art 1889-1989, Barbican Art Gallery, London (1989)
A Russian Impressionist: Paintings and Drawings by Leonid Pasternak, 1890–1945, Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles (1988)
Leonid Pasternak 1862–1945: Exhibition of Oil Paintings, Pastels and Drawings, Ziv Noam Art Gallery, Tel Aviv (1984)
Leonid Pasternak, Wylma Wayne Fine Art, Bond Street, London (1983)
Leonid Pasternak, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (1982)
Retrospective Exhibition, State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (1979)
Leonid Pasternak 1862–1945, Crawford Centre for the Arts, St Andrews (1978)
Leonid Pasternak: A Russian Impressionist, Maltzahn Gallery, London (1974)
Works by Leonid Pasternak, Oxford University Press headquarters, Dover Street, London (1969)
Paintings by Leonid Pasternak, as part of the Festival of the World and Music, Little Malvern Priory (1969)
Leonid Pasternak: A Centenary Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings, Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Coventry, subsequently at the City Art Gallery and Museum, Bristol, and Lenbachhaus, Munich (1962)
Memorial Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by Leonid Pasternak 1862–1945, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (1958)
Leonid Pasternak: The Russian Scene, Pushkin House, London (1958)
Coronation Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1953)
Exhibition of Subjects of Jewish Interest: Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings, Ben Uri Gallery, London (1946)
Leonid Pasternak, Galerie Victor Hartberg, Berlin (1932)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Leonid Pasternak]