Ben Uri Research Unit

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


William Rothenstein artist

Sir William Rothenstein was born into an assimilated German-Jewish family in Bradford, England in 1872. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and at the Académie Julian in Paris, where he became one of the main artistic links between avant-garde artists in the two cities in the 1890s. With a varied career in the art world, Rothenstein was a prominent member of the New English Art Club (NEAC), art critic for <em>The Studio</em> and co-founder of the Carfax Gallery, which hosted Rodin’s first show in England. He also served as Principal of the Royal College of Art (1920–35) and exhibited widely in London. Sir William Rothenstein died at Far Oakridge, Gloucestershire, England on 14 February 1945.

Born: 1872 Bradford, England

Died: 1945 Far Oakridge, England

Other name/s: Will Rothenstein, Wm. Rothenstein, Sir William Rothenstein


Biography

Artist, teacher and writer, Sir William Rothenstein was born on 29 January 1872 in Bradford, England into an assimilated German-Jewish family. His father, Moritz Rothenstein, was a successful textile merchant who had emigrated from Germany in the 1860s. In 1888, at the age of sixteen, Rothenstein attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he studied under the French master Alphonse Legros. However, upon the advice of Jewish Royal Academician, Solomon J Solomon, he completed his studies at the Académie Julian in Paris (1889–92), where he made a lasting contact with Edgar Degas. He also mixed with some of the key European and Anglo-American artists of the time, including Toulouse-Lautrec, Lucien Pissarro, Rodin, Puvis de Chavannes, Charles Conder, Arthur Studd and James Whistler, becoming one of the principal artistic links between the younger, avant-garde artists in London and Paris in the 1890s. Although he later destroyed much of his Impressionist-influenced work produced in this period, some key paintings have survived, among them Parting at Morning (1891, Tate Collection). Inspired by de Chavannes' paintings of the poor, the work was included in Rothenstein’s Paris exhibition at Père Thomas’s (1892), which was attended by Camille Pissarro and Degas, and well-reviewed in the French press.

Upon his return in England in 1893, Rothenstein exhibited with the New English Art Club (NEAC), of which he became a prominent member. Rothenstein contributed to a popular trend in its early years, depicting interiors, as exemplified by The Browning Readers (1900, Bradford Museums and Galleries) and At the Window (c.1901, Manchester Art Gallery). Both paintings, informed by the work of Whistler, where characterised by the use of a cool, sophisticated palette and attention to an aestheticized interior. In 1906 Rothenstein's work featured in Jewish Art and Antiquities at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and in the same year, he showed, at the NEAC, one of the best-known paintings in his sequence on Jewish ritual, Jews Mourning in a Synagogue, based on models and a synagogue in London's Jewish East End (Tate Collection). The work was created against a backdrop of the rise of the British Zionist movement and the introduction of the 1905 Aliens Act, designed to halt Eastern European Jewish immigration at source. The Jewish Chronicle described the work as ‘full of dignity and pathos’ (JC, November 1906, p. IV) and argued that ‘there is a more complete Jewish atmosphere and deep feeling in this picture than in any of Mr. Rothenstein’s previous paintings’ (JC, June 1906, p. 34). In 1898 Rothenstein co-founded the Carfax Gallery, which hosted Rodin’s first show in England and exhibited work by Augustus John, Beerbohm, Conder, Ricketts and Aubrey Beardsley, among others.

An ambassador for French culture in London, Rothenstein actively promoted contemporary French literature and art and reviewed Paris exhibitions in the new journal, The Studio. He exhibited widely in London, including at the Goupil Gallery (1910) and with Ernest Brown & Phillips (1916). In 1921 he showed portrait drawings of famous contemporaries, landscapes depicting the devastation of the war and peaceful scenes of rural England, painted at and around his Cotswold home, Oakridge Farm. at the Alpine Gallery. The critic, P. G. Konody noted in the Observer that ‘If ever there was an artist to whom one may justly apply Chardin’s famous epigram, ‘One does not paint with colours; one paints with feeling’, this artist is surely Mr. Rothenstein. The depth and sincerity of his feeling are apparent in whatever his brush produces. […] And he paints solidly, […] without any display of bravura, […] giving to each subject its proper weight and substance and tone value’ (Konody 1921, p. 10). Rothenstein also exhibited portrait drawings of famous contemporaries (among them T. S. Eliot and Sir Herbert Baker), alongside oil landscapes, at the Goupil Gallery in 1929. Further solo shows included Agnew and Sons (1932) and the Leicester Galleries (1938). He was also an important friend and mentor to many other artists, including several of the 'Whitechapel Boys'.

In 1917 he became the first Professor of Civic Art at Sheffield University and in 1919 he was appointed Visitor to the Royal College of Art (RCA), later becoming Principal (1920–35). Rothenstein’s earliest interaction with the ‘Ben Uri Arts Society’ was in 1922, when he gave a lecture under its auspices at the Whitechapel Gallery. He was knighted in 1931 and also served as an official war artist in both world wars.

Sir William Rothenstein died at his home at Far Oakridge, Gloucestershire, England on 14 February 1945. In the UK public domain his work is significantly represented in many collections, including the Ashmolean, Ben Uri Collection, British Museum, Fitzwilliam, National Portrait Gallery and the V&A. Posthumously, his work has been exhibited at Ben Uri on several occasions, including in the Festival of Britain Anglo-Jewish Exhibition, Art Section (1951), Coronation Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture (1953) and The Ben Uri Story from Art Society to Museum (2001). In 2012 Rothenstein's work featured in Migrations: Journeys into British Art at Tate Britain. In 2015, building upon Bradford Museum and Gallery’s retrospective Sir William Rothenstein: from Bradford to Benares, Ben Uri mounted the exhibition, Rothenstein’s Relevance, examining his reach and influence upon a selection of (mostly younger) peers, including Alfred Wolmark, Mark Gertler, Jacob Kramer, Albert Rutherston, Eric Kennington and Barnett Freedman.

Sarah McDougall and Irene Iacono

Related books

  • Sarah MacDougall, Samuel Shaw, Rachel Dickson and Jonathan Black, William Rothenstein and His Circle (London: Ben Uri, 2016)
  • Jill Iredale and Samue Shaw, The Art of Sir William Rothenstein (Bradford, England: Cartwright Hall Art Gallery 2015)
  • Samuel Shaw, ‘Equivocal Positions’: The Influence of William Rothenstein, c.1890-1910, PhD dissertation, University of York (2010)
  • Mary Lago, 'Rothenstein, Sir William', in H C G Matthew and Brian Harrison eds., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004)
  • Robert Speaight, William Rothenstein: the Portrait of an Artist in His Time (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1962)
  • Lady Rothenstein, 'Sir William Rothenstein', Illustrated London News, 10 January 1948, p. 26
  • 'War Artist at Work', Illustrated London News, 28 September 1940, p. 25
  • 'Sir William Rothenstein', Illustrated London News, 11 March 1939, pp. 42-84
  • N. ‘Sir William Rothenstein In Perspective’, The Manchester Guardian, 4 October 1938, p. 10
  • William Rothenstein, 'The Genius of Indian Sculpture', Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, Vol. 86, 24 June 1938, pp. 772-786
  • 'Sir William Rothenstein', The Observer, 23 October 1932, p. 14
  • M. C., 'Yesterday's Broadcast: Sir William Rothenstein', The Manchester Guardian, 19 May 1932, p. 10
  • ‘Nation And Art: Sir William Rothenstein's Broadcast Lecture’, The Manchester Guardian, 19 December 1931, p. 5
  • J. C. Squire, 'Book of the Day: Sir William Rothenstein's Memories', The Observer, 22 February 1931, p. 4
  • William Rothenstein, Men and Memories: Recollections, 1872-1938 (London, Faber & Faber: 1931)
  • D. C. F., 'Paintings By William Rothenstein', The Manchester Guardian, 10 May 1929, p. 16
  • 'Mr. Rothenstein's Art', The Times, 17 February 1921, p. 13
  • 'Religious Worship and Study', The Jewish Chronicle, 9 November 1906, p. IV
  • 'Mr. Will Rothenstein', The Jewish Chronicle, 15 June 1906, p. 34
  • 'Art Notes', Illustrated London News, 21 October 1905, p. 29

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Académie Julian (student)
  • Carfax Gallery (co-founder)
  • New English Art Club (member)
  • Royal College of Art (Principal)
  • Sheffield University (professor)
  • Slade School of Art (student)
  • The Studio (art critic)
  • Tate Gallery (trustee)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • New Acquisitions and Long-term Loans, Ben Uri Gallery, London (2020)
  • Mark Gertler: Paintings from the Luke Gertler Bequest and Selected Important UK Collections, Ben Uri Gallery, London (2019)
  • Rothenstein’s Relevance: Sir William Rothenstein and his Circle, Ben Uri Gallery, London (2015-16)
  • From Bradford to Benares: The Art of Sir William Rothenstein, Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, Yorkshire (2015)
  • No Set Rules: A Century of Selected Works from the Schlee Collection, Southampton, and the Ben Uri Collection, London, Ben Uri Gallery, London (2015)
  • Migrations: Journeys into British Art, Tate Britain, London (2012)
  • Recent Acquisitions 2001-2006, Ben Uri Gallery - The London Jewish Museum of Art, London (2006)
  • Sir William Rothenstein, 1872-1945: a Centenary Exhibition, Bradford Art Galleries and Museums, Bradford, Yorkshire (1972)
  • Fifty Years of Paintings: an Exhibition of Pictures and Drawings by Sir William Rothenstein, Leicester Galleries, London (1938)
  • East End Academy Exhibition, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1933)
  • Portrait Heads and Lanscapes, Agnew and Sons, London (1932)
  • Paintings By William Rothenstein, Goupil Gallery, London (1929)
  • Lefevre Galleries, London (1927)
  • Modern Watercolour and Drawings, Grosvenor Galleries, London (1924)
  • Portrait and Other Drawings, Redfern Gallery, London (1924)
  • William Rothenstein, Alpine Club Gallery, London (1921)
  • On the Péronne Front: a Series of Paintings and Drawings by William Rothenstein, One of the Official British Artists, Goupil Gallery, London (1918)
  • Exhibition of Recent Portrait Drawings by William Rothenstein, Ernest Brown & Phillips, London (1916)
  • Paintings and Drawings by William Rothenstein, Goupil Gallery, London (1910)
  • New English Art Club, Royal Society of British Artists, London (1909)
  • Jewish Art and Antiquities, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London (1906)
  • Recent Pastels by W. Rothenstein, Carfax Gallery, London (1902)
  • Oil Paintings and Paintings on silk by Charles Conder, Drawings of Auvergne and Burgundy, by William Rothenstein, Carfax Gallery, London (1900)
  William Rothenstein
   
Ben Uri collection

William Rothenstein in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [William Rothenstein]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [William Rothenstein] in the Ben Uri Library