After my very long last blog, here is a shorter one !
Ben Uri Gallery (Boundary Road, off Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, London)
When I was visiting London the other day, I visited the Ben Uri gallery in St John’s Wood, just off the famous Abbey Road. I had been sent regular emails from the gallery about events and followed them on Facebook and was interested to visit the premises.
The Girl in the Green Sari by Clara Klinghoffer
A few weeks ago I wrote about Clara Klinghoffer and I knew one of her paintings was at this gallery so I was interested to look at it up close. I eventually found the gallery after going round in circles because I struggled to follow the GPS on my phone. The gallery was much smaller than I had imagined but there on display was the Klinghoffer painting entitled The Girl in the Green Sari.
Girl in a Red Shirt by Ottilie Tolansky (c.1950)
The full-length painting was displayed in the small gallery and was quite impressive. However, for me, more impressive was the full length painting next to it. It was entitled Girl in a Red Shirt and the artist was given as Ottilie Tolansky and I knew I had to find out more about this unknown (to me) artist.
Self portrait by Ottilie Tolansky
Ottalie Pinkasovitch was born in Czernowitz, which was, at the time of her birth, in the northern Bukovian sector of the Austro-Hungary. The town is now known as Chernivsti and is in western Ukraine. She was born on May 30th 1912 into an Orthodox Jewish household. Shortly after Ottalie was born, the town witnessed numerous riots directed against the Jewish community and so the family moved to live in Vienna. For Ottalie, Vienna was home and she always looked upon herself as being Austrian.
Reimann Art School in Berlin
In 1928, at the age of sixteen, the family were on the move again. This time they set up home in Berlin where Ottalie’s father, an internationally recognised singer, took up the post of Obercantor at the city’s eighteenth century Alte Synagougue. Meanwhile, the family having recognised that their daughter had a great talent for art decided to enter her into the Reimann School of Art in Berlin. It was a private art school which had been founded in 1902 by Albert and Klara Reimann, and later in January 1937 was re-established in Regency Street, Pimlico, London following the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. After leaving the Reimann School, she continued her studies at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts.
Meadow Scene by Ottilie Tolansky
Hitler came to power in 1933 when he became the German Chancellor and with growing antisemitic views which swept the country the Pinkasovitch family moved to the safety of England. Ottilie’s father accepted a job at a synagogue in Cheetham Hill, which was the predominantly Jewish area of Manchester. Ottilie, who was enrolled at the Manchester Municipal School of Art, once again came into contact with her friend, the physicist Samuel Tolansky who was working at the University of Manchester.
Mary Louise by Ottalie Tolansky
Samuel Tolansky had been born on November 17th 1907 in Newcastle upon Tyne. His parents had migrated to Great Britain around the turn of the century. His ancestors had come from Odessa but were of Lithuanian Jewish origin. Samuel was the second child in a family of two boys and two girls. His father was a tailor and, like most immigrants from Eastern Europe at the time, he had to start near the bottom of the ladder both financially and socially. For the first ten years of life in England Samuel’s father lived in conditions of considerable poverty and that his son’s progress up the educational ladder was, at every critical stage, dependent on his ability to win scholarships and other awards. However, Samuel worked hard and succeeded.
Samuel Tolansky
Ottilie had first met Samuel in Berlin in 1931 when he had been working at the Physikalisch-Technische Reicsansalt, a German government scientific institute. In 1932, after a year working at the Berlin Institute he went to England and attended Imperial College London as a researcher into interferometry. He remained in London until 1934. From Imperial College London he relocated to Manchester and from 1934 to 1947 worked at the University of Manchester, as an Assistant Lecturer, later Senior Lecturer and Reader. Ottilie and Samuel’s friendship blossomed and the couple found themselves in love. The couple married in 1935. Ottilie gave birth to their first child, Ann, who is now married and having graduated in history from Oxford University, became a solicitor. A second child, Jonathan, was born in London. He became a musician, a percussionist who has played in several of the leading orchestras.
Abstract by Ottilie Tolansky
Samuel and Ottilie Tolansky left Manchester and moved to London, where, after the war had ended, she attended the Hammersmith School of Art and regularly submitted her work at various exhibitions. Ottilie’s portraiture, still lifes and figure drawings, which she completes mainly in oils and gouache are characterised by her main use of blues and violets.
Rabbi Joseph Trostmann by Ottilie Tolansky (c.1962)
One of her most famous portraits, in fact two paintings, is of her grandfather Rabbi Joseph Trostmann. She based the depiction of the elderly man on her childhood recollections and family photographs. One can be found at Stoke-on-Trent Art Gallery whilst the other was kept in the family. After Ottilie died, her son Jonathan Tolansky, donated it to the Ben Uri Gallery.
Portrait of a Gentleman by Ottilie Tolansky
Ottilie Tolansky died in London on February 13th 1977 aged 64. Her husband who had been nominated for a Nobel Prize, and was a principal investigator to the NASA lunar project known as the Apollo program, died four years earlier.
my daily art display 