Max Gertler by Lady Ottoline Morrell vintage snapshot print, 1917. © National Portrait Gallery, London
My featured artist today is Markz Gertler. He was one of the most prominent artists of his generation and an early member of the New English Art Club, elected in 1912. He was a painter of figures, portraits and still-life. Markz was born on December 9th 1891 at 16 Gun Street, Spitalfields, London. He was the youngest of five children born to Austrian-Jewish immigrants from Poland, Louis Gentler and Kate (Golda) Berenbaum. Markz had to elder brothers, Harry and Jacob, known as Jack and two elder sisters, Deborah and Sophie.
Dorset Street, Spitalfields (c.1910)
By the 19th century, most of the area’s around Spitalfields had traditional industries, including silk weaving, but they had moved elsewhere, although the area still produced some textiles. This decline of the local industry destroyed Spitalfields and it became a poverty-stricken, overpopulated area with little work. The grand houses which had been built by the Huguenots were turned into slums, and the area became unsafe. By the late 19th century, many people considered the place the most criminal in London.
The Rabbi and his Grandchild by Mark Gertler (1913)
The following year after Markz was born, 1892, because of the terrible economic downturn in the area, the family moved back to Markz’s mother’s native city of Przemyśl in Galicia, which at the time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but now is situated in south-eastern Poland close to the Ukraine border. Life for the family was little better here as Max’s father worked as an innkeeper but this failed and now the family were financially desperate. It could have been that his father felt guilty about not being able to support his family but one night in 1893, Gertler’s father Louis, without telling anyone, left his family destitute and on the brink of starvation, and went off to America to search for work. Much later he contacted his wife to say that once he got established in America, he would send for them and all would be well. It never happened as all his hopes of making a fortune in America ended in failure.
Whitechapel High Street (1905)
Following yet another business failure Louis Gertler left America and returned to England and the London borough of Whitechapel, the heart of London’s Jewish quarter. He set himself up as a furrier and in 1896 he arranged for his family to join him. Once in England, his son’s first name was changed from the Polish Markz to Mark.
Portrait of Mark Gertler by John Currie (1913)
Gertler spent his early formative years in Whitechapel, London, a poor Jewish community, and attended nearby schools in Settles Street and Deal Street between 1897 and 1906. He displayed a gifted artistic talent even as a young child and was said to have been motivated by pavement artists, advertising posters, and it was the autobiography of the great English painter William Powell Frith, which made Max determined to become a professional artist. In 1906, at the age of fifteen, on leaving school so as to earn some money for his family Mark (known as Max) became an apprentice at the stained-glass company Clayton and Ball. He hated working there and rarely spoke of the experience in later years. During this time, he would attend evening classes at the Regent Street Polytechnic but in 1907 he had to drop out of college due to his family’s perilous finances. In 1908, Max was placed third in a national art competition and then realised that he could become a great artist. In 1908 Gerter met the artist, William Rothenstein. After seeing Max’s work Rothenstein wrote to Max’s father:
“…It is never easy to prophesy regarding the future of an artist but I do sincerely believe that your son has gifts of a high order, and that if he will cultivate them with love and care, that you will one day have reason to be proud of him. I believe that a good artist is a very noble man, and it is worth while giving up many things which men consider very important, for others which we think still more so. From the little I could see of the character of your son, I have faith in him and I hope and believe he will make the best possible use of the opportunities I gather you are going to be generous enough to give him…”
However, knowing the cost of studying art and that the family would be ununable to pay his tuition fees he became downhearted.
Portrait of a Girl by Mark Gertler (1912)
Having the money to pay for tuition fees, he needed a sponsor to put him forward to the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art. This he received with a recommendation from William Rothenstein, an English painter, printmaker, draughtsman, lecturer, and writer on art who lived in the affluent London borough of Hampstead and who held a number of soirées which often included many well-known artists and some young and up and coming ones, such as Mark. Mark Gertler entered the Slade in 1908 and studied there for three years. He was the first and youngest Jewish working-class student of his generation to do so.
In her 1989 biography A Life of Dora Carrington: 1893-1932 Gretchen Gerzina, wrote about Max Gertler’s arrival at the Slade, writing:
“…At the Slade, Mark was at first something of a misfit. He had started school late in life and had left it at the age of fourteen. His hair was short and his clothes were different. Most of all, however, the other students found him too serious and too intense. He was extremely handsome, with huge dark eyes, pale skin, and a thin body, and he was both solemn and passionate about his art. Only at the polytechnic had he finally been introduced to museums and systematic schooling in the history of art, including the old masters. When he first arrived at the Slade at seventeen, he had the fervour of a convert who has surmounted great obstacles for his religion. In contrast, his fellow students seemed privileged and rather frivolous. Yet his early opinions of them were not untouched by envy…”
Still Life by Mark Gertler
After a little time at the Slade, Max made friends with a group of very talented students all of whom would become famous artists, such as C.R.W. Nevinson, an English figure and landscape painter, etcher and lithographer, who was one of the most famous war artists of the First World War, Stanley Spencer, John S. Currie, Maxwell Gordon Lightfoot, Edward Wadsworth, Adrian Allinson and painter and draughtsman Rudolph Ihlee. This group became known as the Coster Gang because as writer David Boyd Haycock put it, they mostly wore black jerseys, scarlet mufflers and black caps or hats like the costermongers who sold fruit and vegetables from carts in the street.
Vanessa Bell’s Friday Club exhibition at the Alpine Club Gallery
In 1910, whilst he was still an art student at the Slade, Max began exhibiting some of his paintings at Vanessa Bell’s Friday Club. Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf. The idea for the Friday Club was inspired by her earlier involvements of café life in Paris. It was her wish to create a similar atmosphere, and the Friday Club held its first meeting in the summer of 1905 and that November the Club held its first exhibition. From 1910 until 1918, the Friday Club was based at the Alpine Club.
………to be continued.
Once again much of the information was gleaned from various Wikipedia sites but also these excellent websites:
