MICHAEL SADLER AND JACOB KRAMER: ART PATRONAGE IN THE LEEDS JEWISH COMMUNITY
19131923
RACHEL DICKSON
On 19 December 1919 the Jewish Chronicle illustrated and reported that Leeds City Art Gallery had been presented with what would become two of its most powerful early twentieth century works of art: Day of Atonement and Hear Our Voice, Oh Lord Our God, (also known as Pogroms), both by local Jewish artist, Jacob Kramer, as an acknowledgement of his status in Leeds, and to celebrate his imminent departure for London. 1 Although the gift was effectively made by the local Jewish community via subscription through the Leeds Jewish Representative Council (a bold step considering both the daring modernism of the first work, the difficult subject matter of the second, and the city’s recent attitude towards its Jewish population – in June 1917 resentment of young Jewish males on the streets, apparently avoiding military service, led to antisemitic violence), 2 a key figure in this initiative was once again Michael Sadler, Vice-Chancellor of the University, unexpected supporter of the Jewish community and Kramer’s most important, loyal and longstanding patron.
Sadler’s appointment in 1911 had far reaching consequences, beyond the confines of academia, into a wide range of cultural activities and institutions, within the city of Leeds, and into the West Riding and beyond - including the Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds Arts Club, Leeds Arts Collection Fund and the Leeds Luncheon Club (surely a precursor/model for Kramer’s own Yorkshire Luncheon Group, note the similarity of name). Other broader initiatives included his ambitious but, ultimately, unsuccessful scheme to decorate Leeds Town Hall with the work of mainly local, modernist artists, including Kramer (extensively documented in Tate Archives); 3 support for the printing / reprographics / advertising industries within West Riding; an interest in the new medium of photography; involvement with local publications – and, perhaps most surprisingly, with the Jewish community.
Indeed, the breadth and depth of Sadler’s influence in Leeds and, hence, the void felt upon his resignation, is perfectly summed up in two cartoons by Kester published in the Yorkshire Post. The first, entitled The Vice-Chancellor’s Activities, printed in November 1913, depicts Sadler undertaking a fearsome range of tasks, with the caption: ‘For physical and mental activity combined, the probability is that the Vice-Chancellor has not at present a peer in the West Riding’. 4 He is shown engaing in various activities, including lecturing on Post-Impressionism, while painting a modern artwork himself, composing speeches in the shower and conducting an orchestra. The second, entitled A Bombshell, published a decade later to mark Sadler’s departure from the University, depicts representatives of the many university and other
societies which benefited from his involvement, in poses registering varying degrees of shock and disbelief (reminiscent of a Bateman cartoon) and declaring as one, under the banner ‘Resignation of Sir Michael Sadler’: ‘There goes our trump card!’ 5 One could perhaps add another organisation to the list, the University Jewish Students Association
For Sadler, the appointment was to mark the end a period of career uncertainty and of emotional upheaval, which he charted frankly in correspondence. 6 Writing to his longstanding closest (and, coincidentally, Jewish) friend, fellow educationalist, Philip Hartog (1864-1947), 7 he made the heartfelt comment: ‘I want to go to Leeds more than anything else I have ever wanted (except for two things) in my life before. And I want to go for the undergraduates.’ 8
At the time of his appointment in early 1911 Sadler was a fledgling art collector, whose interests lay primarily in traditional areas, but by early 1913 he was an avowed and respected ‘modernist’. Dr Madeleine Korn in her unpublished thesis on innovative English collectors suggests that he was then forming what was ‘to be for the next ten years the largest collection of any single Post-Impressionist in this country’, with a focus on Gauguin. 9 Nevertheless, I would add that this was to be but one area of concentration.
By early 1913 Sadler was already listed amongst Yorkshire’s most significant, and mainly titled, collectors in The Year’s Art 1913 10 . In order to have arrived at this elevated position, the collection was advancing rapidly, not only in quantity but in aesthetic scope, and it now embraced a broad range of European modernist tendencies such as Post-Impressionism and German Expressionism. By the end of 1913 key modern European artists included Kandinsky, Cezanne, Gaugin, Serusier and Picasso. Various facets of English modernism were represented with works by Bloomsbury artists, the Whitechapel Boys and New English Art Club members, as well as printmakers working in a range of techniques. The industrial landscape was also explored, and ethnographic pieces, orientalism and bronzes were all tantalisingly alluded to in correspondence or in Sadler’s own detailed notes. The young painter Paul Nash’s enthusiastic letter from 1914 vividly brings the eclectic collection to light:
How much we both enjoyed our day with you and the pictures. It was very interesting to see your fine collection. Especially do I remember the French fellows who were a revelation. The delightful Courbet haunts me still […] The ancient pots are magnificent, we brooded over them, lost in wonder and thought. The bronzes I had ne’er seen the like of before and it was a new thrill to make an intimate acquaintance with these worthy treasures. Usually one’s inspection is limited to craning and peering from a respectful distance and anyhow “respected not to touch” arrests the eager hand.
But this time we did as we pleased and fondled and stroked the beauties, placed them in different lights, at other levels, in fact enjoyed them as they deserved – or rather as we deserved [ ] The paintings interested me greatly, the Johns, the Conders and Will Rothenstein. The Dolls House is really a ‘stunner’. There were jolly drawings too – a notable Rodin and two Rossettis. I must say how much we enjoyed your C J Holmes and the Gauguins and to see them was a real treat. 11
During this period, Sadler considered buying art to be an act of personal salvation. Towards the end of his life, reflecting on this immediate pre-First Word War period, he recalled that his state of mind mirrored an unsettled world order: ‘In those pregnant years my mind was deeply disturbed. I felt that vast changes were pending – war, civil discord and spiritual bewilderment. I felt I should have gone mad, but for one thing. I happened to get interested in modern painting.’ 12
His son, also Michael Sadler (1888-1957), known as Tony [he later changed his surname to Sadleir to distinguish himself in public/published life from his father 13] suggests in his posthumous biography of his father, that the period immediately around his assumption of the Vice-Chancellorship was a ‘truly reckless phase of his collecting-life’ in which picture buying was ‘partly for his own pleasure, partly as a drug to keep depression at bay’. 14 Although to attribute a direct ‘cause and effect’ relationship between Sadler’s state of mind and his picture buying may be a simplification, both father and son refer separately to art acquisition as a therapeutic act Nevertheless Sadler ‘operated compulsorily on a very modest scale; for my mother [who was wealthy in her own right] was out of sympathy with expenditure on nonessentials’ 15 And these constraints – both the financial and the stylistic intransigence of his wife, affected the nature of Sadler’s collecting: financial necessity and space limitations on the one hand, and his own enthusiasms on the other, meant that the collection was in a continual state of flux; as new works were acquired, existing pieces were often sold off or bequeathed and works on paper were often bought, rather than paintings. And having access to Kramer on his ‘doorstep’, who could regularly, and without great fanfare, drop off packages of small and inexpensive drawings, to fulfil an acquisitory need, was an ideal solution. Furthermore, Sadler had the good sense to set up a separate ‘fund’ specifically for the purposes of art acquisition, into which he paid earnings derived from his extra curricula art–related activities, such as lectures or writing.
The display of the collection was facilitated by Sadler leasing Buckingham House at 41 Headingly Lane in Leeds, an imposing detached residence appropriate for his new position in
the university. Sadler’s meticulous notes and lengthy correspondence, often composed daily, as he visited various European galleries during trips abroad from 1909 onwards, show that he was constantly aware of the impact on the viewer of the way in which works, particularly PostImpressionists with their strong colours, were hung; how a hanging system should be designed to allow maximum flexibility; the suitability of certain colours against which to display works, and whether pieces should be sparsely hung or not. With the availability of Buckingham House, Sadler was able to put these theories into practice. By January 1913, several months before Kramer’s first visit, the house (meaning, the collection), was deemed to be in a fit state to receive important players from the art world. These early visitors included Roger Fry, as well as Frank Rutter from the City Art Gallery, and C Lewis Hind, the American art critic and author of the recent publication, The Post-Impressionists 16 Referring in his memoirs to the visit, he noted particularly how the Gauguins stood out: ‘hanging in a noble room, specifically arranged and decorated for them, with white walls and black curtains.’ 17 Sadler himself described his new home in glowing terms: ‘The whole effect of the house is excellent, and the view at night and in the morning is splendid. But bareness and simplicity of colour are essential to the style of the place.’ 18
Sadler’s first period of protracted support for Kramer between 1913 and 1917, occurred in the lull between his two periods of concentrated acquisition of European modernist work. Nevertheless, the collection was far from stagnating. 19 During this time, Sadler was concentrating his energies on direct relationships, particularly with young artists, as well as with Kandinsky, with money changing hands on a less formal basis, often by-passing any strict gallery arrangement. Letters to Kramer regularly refer to cheques sent and offers made for works, in amounts ranging from one guinea to £10; a statement covering October 21, 1914 to June 8, 1915 notes total advances of £65 – a significant sum of money. 20
During this period, the ‘English’ part of the collection rapidly expanded, with works by a number of young artists with whom Sadler had entered into sympathetic correspondence (Kramer himself was listed in this ‘English’ section in Sadler’s stock book). These letters serve to illustrate that by 1913 Sadler was secure in his own taste and happy to make acquisitions directly from artists, as well as buying unknown artists’ work from their first commercial exhibitions. Aside from copious regular correspondence with Kramer (more than with any other single artist and over the most extended period – Sadler was still writing to him on the subject of the Yorkshire Luncheon Group in December 1934), the years 1913-14 provide letters
from Mark Gertler, John Currie, Henry Lamb, Paul Nash, C R W Nevinson and Albert Rutherston, amongst others, who between them were representative of the full range of emerging British modernist tendencies. 21 A continual tripartite refrain permeates these letters: firstly, acknowledgment in the warmest of tones of his support, financial or otherwise, for struggling [often youthful] artistic endeavour; secondly, an acknowledgement of the significance of the collection itself; and thirdly, a constant note of dissatisfaction with the establishment gallery/dealer system, the public at large, and their continued failure to embrace modern work
Amongst these artists, Kramer was the most convenient, local, and notably, inexpensive option to pursue, as to a lesser extent was his Jewish fellow art school fellow, Philip Naviasky. Furthermore, the close Sadler father-son relationship shifted during 1913 when Tony, recently graduated, was sent to Boston by his new employers, the publishers Constable and Company Ltd., On his return the following year, marriage ensured a move away from the family; and perhaps his father’s growing involvement with Kramer (the first letter from Sadler dates from 18 October 1913), and the friendships with other young artists, partly developed alongside this change in familial circumstance. Kramer and Tony were almost exact contemporaries. So we can perhaps see Sadler taking a paternal role in the relationship, though Kramer is never ‘Jacob’ in correspondence.
It is also worthwhile noting that Sadler was evidently comfortable with Jewish subject matter beyond his involvement with Kramer; his stock book (in the Tate archive) records his owning two drawings by Slade graduate Rudolph Ihlee: 22 A Crowd of Jews and Three Jewish Girls with a Baby, both 1911; an ink and wash drawing by French artist and illustrator Jean Louis Forain (1852-1931) entitled Jews at the Praying wall in Jerusalem, as well as Gertler’s portrait of his Jewish émigré mother Golda, acquired in 1911 (now Tate Collection). 23 Gertler also referred in a letter to Sadler c 1909 to an unfinished work, A Jew Praying, which Sadler may or may not have acquired at this time. Yet, within the extensive correspondence between Kramer and Sadler, and despite Sadler’s propensity for keeping notes, there is little in his writing of this period to suggest his interest in specifically Jewish works. Indeed, he seems to have barely commented on the concept of Jewish art at all in his first decade of collecting. One of his earliest art notes in autumn 1909 records a conversation with Mr Myers of London art dealers, Messrs Obach: ‘We talked about the Jews. He thought they had produced no great
paintings and hardly any great musicians. They are appreciative as a nation, but not discriminating. What they are passionately fond of is collecting […] 24
The precise beginnings of the Sadler / Kramer relationship are somewhat unclear. However, correspondence in the Jewish Education Aid Society archives at Southampton University 25 firmly link the two through this charitable organisation. The JEAS had been formed in London in 1907 as a development of the existing Education Aid Committee. 26 Although Leeds Jewish charities were unable to deal with fledgling artists, Kramer was fortunately one of a small number of provincial cases caught in the safety net of the newly established Society. Dr Meyer Coplans, an eminent Jewish bacteriologist and expert in Public Health at the university, is recorded as Kramer’s first case mentor. Despite his area of expertise - he was usually an adviser to the Science Section, Coplans nevertheless had some affinity with the art world, as he was a nephew by marriage of the distinguished painters Solomon J Solomon and Lily Delissa Joseph. Writing to the Society’s secretary, Ernest Lesser, in late 1909, he described Kramer’s circumstances as ‘a very poor case. Father etches photographs and earns in full work 30/- weekly average. recently no work for 7 weeks and 7 in family’. 27 Kramer recalled, in an interview with Joseph Cohen, biographer of Isaac Rosenberg, in early 1960s, that his Russian émigré artist father, who wished to take his family to America, was refused entry as he suffered from cataracts, ending up in Leeds as a photographic retoucher because of ‘so much printing work here.’
Coplans seems to have particular and strong-principled support for Kramer, even threatening to resign over any mishandling of his grants; he also sensed Kramer’s fragile psychological make-up, hinting at his nervous disposition on a number of occasions: ‘the Society ought to be prepared to see him through – and no half measures – for in this instance especially, insufficient help might prove worse than useless.’ 28 Following Coplan’s departure from Leeds in May 1914, 29 Sadler, despite being non-Jewish, seems to have stepped into the role with alacrity, thus replacing one exceptional and concerned case mentor with another.
Kramer had, in all likelihood, first come to the notice of the Society’s Art Section through his Leeds art school Headmaster, Haywood Rider, who wrote a testimonial in June 1909 declaring: ‘Jacob Kramer is worthy of all assistance on the part of his religious community. He is extremely industrious and hardworking, and is one of the most promising students I have ever had.’ 30 The appeal was evidently successful as Kramer was recorded as a new provincial case
in December 31 General comments from the society suggest that art students were, at that time, viewed as particularly problematical cases, and the annual report for 1913-14 anxiously highlighted the additional difficulties posed by the rise of Modernism in art: ‘It is perhaps right to point out that owing to the present unsettled state of the world of Art, arising from the recent emergence of new theories and movements, a young artist finds himself beset with peculiar difficulties. The new and conflicting gospels of Art now being preached, are apt to have a disturbing effect on a young artist whose style has not yet matured, unless he is endowed with a strong individuality and steadiness of aim.’ 32
A letter from Sadler to the Society in July 1913 indicates that, although he had been aware of Kramer’s art the previous summer, they had only just met when Kramer and several fellow art students recently visited the collection in Headingly Lane. 33 Local students were of course particularly able to benefit first hand from Sadler’s acquisition strategy, innovative display, and the accessibility of his collection, made further possible through his policy of readily loaning works both to exhibitions and individuals. In early 1920 Kramer was somewhat lax in returning borrowed Kandinskys which he had used to illustrate his own lectures, 34 while Sadler himself presided over Kramer’s lecture on art and music at Leeds Arts Club in March 1920. 35
During July 1913, extensive correspondence passed between Sadler and Lesser, as Sadler endeavoured to pitch precisely the right tone of his support for Kramer, simultaneously both praising and criticising the young artist. Sadler first reported that, on the one hand, ‘Kramer has not by any means satisfied his teachers at the Leeds School with respect to seriousness and earnestness, and has shown anything but adequate appreciation of the help given to him’, 36 then countering with the more positive: ‘I went carefully through the drawings which Kramer bought to me and think that some of them show considerable (‘great’ crossed out) promise. In style, some of his work reminded me of some of the early work of Mark Gertler, though less accomplished and varied’. 37 Concerned that he had not indicated his support forcefully enough, a second letter swiftly followed, agreeing with Coplans, recommending the Slade as a more progressive teaching institution, rather than the more ‘establishment’ Royal Academy Schools, favoured by the Society: ‘Judged by London standards, he is exceptionally gifted. If I were responsible for his further training, I should without hesitation seek for his admission to the Slade’. 38
At the same time, Sadler was also writing regularly to Kramer and receiving him as a frequent visitor. Other young artists in London and elsewhere may have benefited from Sadler’s sporadic acquisition of their work or from infrequent opportunities of seeing his remarkable collection, but Kramer enjoyed an almost weekly interaction with Sadler or his collection, prior to his departure for London.
The lobbying in favour of the Slade paid off and Kramer enrolled for one academic year, supported by the JEAS, in Autumn 1913, 39 joining a number of fellow Jewish students, who are now known collectively as the ‘Whitechapel Boys’, given their links to the Jewish East End and the Whitechapel Gallery. Sadler himself was clearly a candidate to lend works to the gallery’s groundbreaking May 1914 exhibition, Twentieth Century Art – A Review of Modern Movements, in which Kramer exhibited within the controversial Jewish section. Although Sadler was finally unable to lend for reasons unknown, his name in the exhibition address book, in the Whitechapel archives, is accompanied by the curator’s comment: ‘Shld have some’, indicating the gallery’s full awareness of Sadler’s role as a modernist collector of note, however geographically distanced.
Further correspondence with the Society during the autumn, whilst Kramer was at the Slade, indicates that Sadler was now confidently promoting himself as an excellent judge of draftsmanship: ‘I am fastidious about drawings and though, for fear of spoiling him by too early praise, I have not told him that I can put his drawing side by side with a masterpiece without any fear of the comparison […] He has worked as hard as anyone I know, and we are a hard-working community here in Leeds.’ 40 And by the end of 1914 Sadler had moved far beyond his modest beginnings as a collector, and was now an established writer on art, comfortable and familiar enough with the work of other English modernists, such as Harold Gilman, to be able to recommend him as a prospective tutor for Kramer in the tricky area of ‘colour’.
Following the end of Kramer’s Slade year, Sadler gradually assumed a broader role in his protégé’s career, often recorded in both the mainstream English and the Jewish press. Jewish World (the more prodigiously illustrated sister publication to the Jewish Chronicle) and the Yorkshire Weekly Post both noted that, in autumn 1915, Professor Sadler presented an unidentified work by Kramer to the City Art Gallery, though this is now untraced.
Kramer’s post-Slade years, which were marked by vacillation between London and Leeds, were no doubt catastrophically hindered by the sudden death of his father in May 1916, and his hastily-assumed role as sole breadwinner in the family. According to the Jewish Chronicle, Max Kramer had fatally collapsed whilst sitting for his son. 41 In the aftermath of this tragedy, Sadler significantly stepped up his support, and acquired of two of Kramer’s major works, both of which directly addressed Jewish subject matter in a modernist idiom: The Jew,/ Meditation, now in the collection of Leeds University, and Death of My Father, inherently also profoundly Jewish, depicting the body wrapped in its white shroud, typical of Orthodox Jewish burial. The significance of the Sadler Kramer relationship - that Kramer should sell to him such a deeply personal work, and so soon after his father’s demise - is, I suggest, encapsulated in this transaction. Sadler also acquired numerous drawings and watercolours at this time, including the Slade work, Sorrow, which he subsequently bequeathed to the Cooper Gallery, Barnsley, his Yorkshire birthplace.
Sadler continued to operate in various spheres of Kramer’s life: he opened the joint exhibition by Kramer and fellow Leeds student, Fred Lawson, held at Leeds School of Art in November 1916, asserting in the Y orkshire Post, that even ‘if he had been stoned on his way to the exhibition, he would nevertheless have attended’ 42 At the opening, he spoke of Kramer’s bond with his fellow Leeds citizens, ‘interpreting for them the humanity, the romance, and the pathos of the life of their city’, though hinting that the relationship between Jews and Gentiles had not always been easy and ‘the social environments of Leeds have not always taken on a very roseate hue’. 43
Sadler also sat for his portrait by Kramer during summer 1917, which his wife disliked intensely, although Sadler himself approached the issue more diplomatically, asking if Kramer would ‘kindly consider whether a line indicating that there is a wave in my hair above the ear would be consonant with your composition?’ 44 Sadler was evidently reconciled to the work, now lost, as he lent it to the Glasgow Society of Painters and Sculptors exhibition in early 1920, on Kramer’s behalf, along with Death of My Father, where the portrait was described as possessing the “restrained grey of study and repose.” 45 The portrait remained in Sadler’s possession until his death, when it was documented being ‘given away’ to the department of extra mural studies at Oxford Its current whereabouts are unknown.
Immediately prior to his departure for the temporary post with the Calcutta University commission in autumn 1917, Sadler entered into debate defending Kramer’s painting, The Jew, which had inadvertently become the object of controversy in the press. The work had been illustrated with supportive comments by C Lewis Hind, first in the Evening News and latterly in the art magazine Colour, which prided itself on its high reprographic values and glossy colour images. The painting then appeared a third time in the Jewish press in Jewish World, where Frank Emanuel, a traditional topographical artist and printmaker, and early supporter of Isaac Rosenberg, Kramer’s fellow Slade student, unleashed vitriol on the work: ‘I cannot believe that anyone can perceive anything Jewish about this professed ‘symbol of the type’. The unwholesome caricature might just as ill be that of an Anabaptist being throttled, A Bible Christian attacked by elephantitis, an Atheistic lunatic suffering from Adenoid […]’, further adding ‘Knowing who is head of art affairs in Leeds, it does not surprise us that the author of this exquisite yet awe-inspiring work is heralded from there as ‘a genius ’ 46
Sadler strongly advised Kramer not to reply directly, but waded in on his behalf, writing in no uncertain terms to the editor, suggesting that differences of opinion in regard to both art and religion were inevitable, whilst taking the opportunity to once again laud Kramer’s works: ‘the longer I live with his pictures and drawings the more they mean to me, and the more intensely do I feel the power of his creative insight.’ 47
Equilibrium was somewhat restored by a fourth reference in Charles Marriott’s new publication, Modern Art: a collection of works in modern art, published under the auspices of Colour, in which the author commented: ‘It strikes one as barbaric and uncouth in its simplicity, so thoroughly has the artist made use of elimination. The tragedy of Jewry, its isolation, its oppression, its patience in suffering, seem to be conveyed by the simplest possible means’. 48 And finally, it was used as the cover image for the first issue of Renesans in January 1920, a Yiddish cultural magazine published in London for one year, supported by Ben Uri, to which a number of the Whitechapel Boys, including Bomberg, contributed artworks.
It should not be forgotten that the First World War formed the backdrop to this period, and Sadler also supported Kramer with regard to an enquiry about the newly formed Jewish Battalion. On the eve of his departure for India, in August 1917, Sadler wrote to a Colonel Scovell on Kramer’s behalf. Scovell in turn referred to Colonel Patterson, commander of the recently formed Zionist Mule Brigade, who gave assurance that he would look after Kramer,
if he applied to the new regiment. For reasons unknown, Kramer did not pursue this avenue, and furthermore, as a Russian so-called ‘friendly’ alien was only finally enlisted in the last months of the conflict. Following a tribunal, and through the efforts of Herbert Read, a close friend from Leeds Arts Club days, he was appointed a regimental librarian within a Russian labour battalion. Correspondence with Tony Sadler also hints at an desire on Kramer’s part to be considered as an official war artist, alongside his fellow Jewish Slade peers, David Bomberg and Bernard Meninsky; sadly this idea came to nothing.
Although Sadler left Leeds for Oxford in 1923, the point at which Kramer himself seemed to lose confidence and step back from both modernism and from London, he continued to view Kramer’s work as an active part of his collection, for example lending The Jew to the London Group’s important 1928 retrospective. And in the documents prepared for probate after Sadler’s death, more than 20 works by Kramer were listed in his collection, as well as a portrait bust of Kramer by Loris Rey, Head of Sculpture at Leeds School of Art, acquired in the 1930s (which makes a striking companion to the better known bust of Kramer by Jacob Epstein, in the collections of both Tate and Ben Uri) 49
Sadler may have also directly influenced the development of Kramer’s art in several unexpected ways. Firstly, in the appreciation of the industrial landscape as a suitable modernist subject. Sadler was keen to aestheticise the local urban and industrial landscape. and his correspondence was, on occasions, marked with uncharacteristically romantic phrases. He notably wrote to Walter Sickert in October 1913, declaring: ‘[…] the thing here is the life of the people and the industrial landscape, and the Goya -like alleyways at dusk. I wish to goodness someone would come and draw the Leeds back streets.’ 50 And in a lecture to the Leeds WEA in the same month, he glorified the northern industrial architecture, which embodied for him the new machine age: ‘[…] for us moderns strength and power show themselves in the great arms of travelling cranes, in the gossamer beauty of scaffolding, in the gaunt severity of Lancashire mill sheds and in the intense and silent power of dynamos and turbines. Where there is force, there is beauty.’ 51
Sadler and Kramer also had the opportunity locally to view works inspired by the industrial landscape during spring 1913, when Cartright Hall in Bradford exhibited Etchings and Lithographs by Joseph Pennell to illustrate the Wonder of Work, which included dramatic views of northern industrial towns and cities, such as Leeds, Pudsey and Bradford 52 The idea
of taking the nobility of the industrial landscape and its associated labour as inspiring artforms cannot have been far from Sadler’s mind when he proposed the subject for the, ultimately unsuccessful, Leeds Town Hall decorations. Despite the failure of the scheme, Kramer’s stylised design of miners and pit ponies remained in Sadler’s collection until his death. Sadler’s interest in the industrial was also demonstrated in his acquisition of work by other local artists, such as Edward Wadsworth’s Ladle Slag, Old Hill 2 1919, 53 and a number of watercolours of industrial scenes by Charles Holmes, Director of the National Gallery since 1916 and himself a respected painter and fan of the industrial. According to his stock book, Sadler also owned 12 lithographs of War Work at Westwood Works by Rudolph Ihlee, published in 1919, although it is not clear when these were acquired.
These industrial images find specific echoes in Kramer’s work. Kramer, though always less motivated by the landscape than by humanity, produced a small number of images of industrial buildings, including coloured sketches and starkly graphic monochrome designs, such as the cover illustration for TNT Tales by Tommy Lamb, a compilation of anecdotes relating to the local Barnbow Munitions factory, published in 1918. 54
Sadler and Kramer also shared an interest in flourishing contemporary gipsy culture, championed particularly by Augustus John, whom Sadler knew and admired and with whom Kramer was acquainted with in bohemian circles in London. And Kramer often portrayed his sister Sarah in colourful gipsy costume. Professor Lisa Tickner devotes a chapter in her publication, Modern Life and Modern Studies to the ‘widespread obsession with gypsies and ‘tramping’. 55 Kramer himself was prone to leading an itinerant lifestyle form time to time, often ’tramping’ through the Yorkshire dales, and later renting a caravan at Boroughbridge, which he often visited with the painter, Charles Murray (a private collection photograph shows both artists in front of a caravan) ‘I have just come back to Leeds after a long tramp in Wensleydale – it has taken me 10 days to cover 100 miles’, he noted in a letter to Herbert Read written in the last months of the war. 56
In Leeds, gipsy culture was supported through the activities of the dialect poet, writer and collector, Dorothy Una Ratcliffe, niece of Lord Brotherton, and his lady mayoress during 191314. She established the Romany collection of gipsy material in the Leeds University Library and edited and published the local literary magazine, The Microcosm, between 1914-25 which had a strong local, rural, and folk flavour, along with a recurrent gipsy theme. As well as a vehicle for Ratcliffe’s own poetry, articles and fiction in dialect, notable gipsy paintings by
artists such as Ambrose McEvoy, 57 Albert Rutherston 58 and Fred Lawson were reproduced
Although it had humble beginnings, with profits given to north country charities, and was largely subsidised by Brotherton, the magazine eventually acquired a roster of significant literary contributors, including J R R Tolkein, G K Chesterton, and Laurence Binyon. An issue from 1922 also illustrates a rare example of Sadler’s own watercolour artwork alongside Frank Rutter’s article on William Shackleton 59 and Kramer’s Study of a Child Sadler claimed Ruskin’s influence led him to carry a sketchbook with him for much of his life, although he remained a self-confessed ‘unashamed and enraptured amateur.’
In a different direction, Sadler’s support for Jewish matters in Leeds and particularly for the cause of Jewish Nationalism - The Leeds Jewish community was particularly active within the British Zionist movement - seems to have accelerated during the last four years of his Vicechancellorship.
One of his most significant public appearances in the city, within a Jewish context, took place in late June 1919, at an event which would have focused the entire Leeds Jewish and gentile community on the continuing suffering of central European Jewry, and made the subject of Kramer’s offerings to Leeds Art Gallery even more significant. A national day of mourning to protest at Polish pogroms was held on 26 June 1919, which received enormous coverage in the Jewish, regional and national press. Heightened awareness of the situation amongst the AngloJewish and immigrant communities, from the first protest meetings in April, could not have failed to have an effect on the Jews of Leeds. Nevertheless, Kramer’s letters to Herbert Read written during early 1919, whilst Sadler was still abroad, are exclusively inward looking, referring to his own unsettled position, his desire to move to London, and commitments to forthcoming exhibitions at the Adelphi Gallery and the Glasgow Society of Painters and Sculptors – there is no mention of a major composition or the situation in Poland. 60
London inevitably hosted the largest of the protest gatherings, with a procession estimated at 100,000 marching from the East End to Hyde Park, and the provinces followed suit. Kramer attended the event in Leeds and sketched a portrait in situ of Israel Cohen, the Manchester Guardian journalist, writer and prominent Zionist, who spoke in both cities in one day. 61 Kramer also then gave Cohen a signed reproduction of The Jew
In Leeds, Cohen recorded that, as with other regional cities ‘all Jewish, shops, offices, and factories were closed, thousands of non-Jewish employees joined with their Jewish fellowworkers in their manifestations of grief, and the local press published special articles. A vast concourse, numbering over 4,000, had assembled in the Town Hall, over which Sir Michael Sadler, Vice-Chancellor of Leeds University, presided’ 62 Sadler, although only recently returned from Calcutta, stepped in at last minute due to illness of the Mayor, speaking immediately after Cohen, demonstrating his willingness to support Jewish causes in the most public way. This was also a rare occasion in which he outlined his personal analysis of the current important contribution of Jewry, which was recorded by the Jewish Chronicle:
[…].not only for the artistic sensitiveness and creative power […] not only for their marvelous insight into music, not only for their power of philosophical thought [ ] not only for their power in economic matters, and genius in finance, far more than for these great gifts, because of the example of their family affection and home life, and above all, because of their genius for religion, the Jewish race was indispensable to European and American civilizations at this hour. 63
A Mr J A Lamb, who was in the audience, recalled Sadler’s speech:
Michael Sadler was a simple man in the company of undistinguished people, and he was dignified and scholarly when this was desirable […] These qualities –sensitiveness, simplicity and learning, with the addition of deep sincerity – contributed largely to his powers as a gifted orator […] The Jewish community in Leeds asked him to preside (in the absence of the Lord Mayor) […] Although he received little more than half-an-hours’ notice, he delivered an appreciation of the Jewish people, their history and tribulations and their great gifts. I have heard many famous speakers, but I have never seen an audience so completely carried away by an address simply delivered and by inspiring thoughts beautifully expressed. 64
Early in January 1920, Sadler addressed the conference of the Jewish Inter University Federation, suggesting that Jews might form a valuable link between the West and East and ‘[…] because Jews had it in their power to symbolize a great national effort they might play an important part in the student life of the period ’ His speech, furthermore, singled out Kramer (and to a lesser extent, Naviasky) with the endorsement: ‘one of the things that he was proudest of in belonging to Leeds was that […] .a young painter […] had risen to one of those positions in national art upon which they must congratulate him and congratulate themselves’. 65
The following autumn, Sadler delivered the Opening lecture to the University Jewish Students Association on ‘Dualism of the English Character, in which he made some ‘interesting allusions to the present position and prospects of the Jewish National Movement’. 66 The following month
he hosted Lord Rothschild who was visiting the city to open the now regular annual charity bazaars, begun in 1912, 67 which ran over three days in the Town Hall. Sadler was a regular supporter of these events, which raised money towards settling ‘Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe’ in Palestine and used his opening speech on 10 November to promote the idea that the Jews could be held up as model examples of a people who demonstrated the triple duties of modern citizenship, ‘loyalty to kingdom, race and human brotherhood’. 68
Sadler also acted as facilitator between Lord Rothschild, Kramer, and Selig Brodetsky, the recently arrived Jewish Professor of Mathematics, in arranging for the three to visit Buckingham House together, 69 so that Lord Rothschild could sit for a portrait by Kramer, which is now in the Ben Uri collection. 70 And the following May, at Brodetsky’s prompting, Sadler invited Dr Chaim Weizmann, the leading Zionist, to speak to both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences at the University and at the Leeds Luncheon Club.
There is little evidence that Kramer had strong Jewish political affiliations, but at this time he seemed to be on the periphery of the same Zionist circles as his mentor. A design for a programme in the Ben Uri collection, 71 depicting a stylised labourer working under a star of David, suggests a spirit of support for Jewish nationalism, at a time when young Jews were being encouraged to provide labour in Palestine. Tommy Lamb, Secretary of Leeds Art Club, and Kramer’s friend and supporter, spoke about Kramer to the Leeds Young Schomerim, a progressive Jewish Youth Group in November 1919 72 Kramer offered to sketch a portrait of the highest bidder at the fund-raising Sinai Bazaar in London.
To conclude, I would like to return to our starting point, to the gifting of Pogroms and Day of Atonement to Leeds. In December when the Chronicle highlighted the works, the process for their donation had already been underway for almost four months, with first mention of the scheme noted in the paper in early August. ‘In view of the fact that Mr Jacob Kramer is leaving Leeds for London’, it confidently noted,
it is the intention of the Jewish community to present to the City Art gallery a representation of his work. For that purpose a public subscription has been opened. The collection will comprise works representative of all sides of Mr Kramer’s genius, the central piece being a female depicting the sufferings of Jewry. There will also be a work in black and white showing Jews
at prayer and a number of studies of Jewish interest. The entire gift will be Jewish in spirit and fact. 73
Having just returned from India, Sadler wasted no time in writing to Kramer, offering to participate in the official presentation, and also mentioning, rather enigmatically, that he would make his own proposal for the Day of Atonement, should it not be accepted by the Gallery Despite the Chronicle’s bold tone, the issue of the gifts became increasingly protracted. Although the works were illustrated in December, a piece the following January nevertheless suggested that there still remained ‘some question of whether the Corporation will agree to the pictures being included in their Municipal Collection’. 74 Sadler himself only finally saw the works early in December and wrote almost immediately to Kramer offering unstinting support: ‘The picture of Pogroms records with intense emotion a horrible event. It is therefore itself a horrible picture. But it is a historic document of great importance’, adding, ‘The Jews at Prayer is a Masterpiece. I feel it is one of the greatest works you have done. I admire the composition as well as the feeling. It is like a great frieze in low-relief’. 75 Nevertheless, he raised the caveat that ‘the pictures will be a pretty strong dose for the Art Gallery Committee and a test of their insight and of their willingness to recognise genius. Don’t be downcast if they feel hostile to these works. All really great things have to go through the ordeal of being hissed at by the crowd’. 76 Dec 12, 1919. The local Georgian poet, Wilfred Childe, whose portrait Kramer painted a decade later, also wrote to both the Yorkshire Post and the Chronicle, offering support, suggesting that he saw within Pogroms a ‘Mater Dolorosa as true to the tragedy of Christendom as to the age-long tragedy of Jewry’. 77
Sadler’s warning was absolutely correct. Behind the scenes, a heated correspondence was passing between the Leeds Jewish Representative Council. 78 and various Art Gallery committee members, as well as between individual committee members, regarding which works to accept. A consensus was finally reached in early 1920. Inevitably, as with any judgement made by committee, prejudice and intransigence jostled with open-mindedness and daring. Local councillors made their feelings clear in a number of strongly worded letters now in Leeds Art Gallery archives. I quote from three to give you a brief flavour:
As regards the Hebraic procession […] It has some good points. The blankets whose stiff folds repeat […] and the general effect is quite good. But I cannot understand the departure from realism – the angular, sawn at faces – I am quite willing to accept a departure from a realistic view of nature, provided it be some sort of improvement […]
I believe k is quite serious about his ‘symbolic’ way of painting but I cannot bring myself to sympathise with it. I should certainly accept the old woman (this is leap year, remember!) 79
At your request I inspected Mr Cramer’s [sic] works at the Art Gallery and as you invite any criticisms I will state candidly that I do not appreciate these examples of the artist’s works. Dr Sadler finds genius in them but I fail to do so – even the craftsmanship and colouring do not fill me with admiration. The feeling they produce in my mind is one of deep depression and sadness! How any sane person should employ art in portraying such depressing ideas is amazing, especially after the experience of the horrors of war. 80
I ?hope that the picture of a despairing woman will not be kept. A certain modern school seems to devote itself to the cult of the hideous. The picture of the procession is the least objectionable 81
The committee eventually decided to accept both works. As councillor Willey noted wryly in a separate postscript to Sadler: ‘I never before experienced such a tremendous difference of opinion as to the merits or demerits of two pictures by the same artist so I suppose we shall please everybody by taking both’. 82
The final word can rest with the Jewish Chronicle. In their correspondent’s description of Kramer, we can perhaps detect something of the power and individuality of the Jewish artist and his work, and the rise of Jewish nationalism, both significant facets of Sadler’s relationship with the Leeds Jewish community during the decade of the Vice-chancellorship:
To the Jews of Leeds there is only one artist whom they associate with modern art, and whom they regard as unusual, nay bizarre and revolutionary, one who has his own message and expresses his own outlook in form and colour. This artist is Mr Jacob Kramer […]. He has felt, subconsciously no doubt, the wave of optimism which has come over Jewry during the last twenty years, the growth of that independence of outlook and national consciousness which is uplifting Jewry from the degraded and gloomy aspects of ghetto life. Like all Jews he feels the gloom, though he gropes to the light.’ 83
1 Jewish Chronicle, 19 December 1919, p. 24
2 Alderman, Geoffrey Modern British Jewry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p.236.
3 Tate Archives TGA 8221/3/2.
4 Yorkshire Evening Post, 19 November 1913
5 Cartoon published in April 1923, illustrated in ‘Tributes from Leeds’ in Michael Sadleir, Sir Michael Sadler –A Memoir by his Son (London: Constable and Co, 1949), .p. 334.
6 See Michael Ernest Sadler holdings in Tate Archives, TGA 8221
7 See Michael Sadleir, p. 190
8 Linda Grier, Achievement in Education The Work of Michael Ernest Sadler 1885-1935 (London: Constable & Co, 1952) p 165
9 Madeleine Korn, Collecting Modern Foreign Art in Britain Before the Second World War, unpublished PhD thesis, The University of Reading, 2001.
10 A C R Carter, ed., The Year’s Art: 1913 (London: Hutchinson & Co, 1913).
11 See TGA 8221/2/112-116, letter from Paul Nash, 16 August 1914.
12 Michael Sadleir, p196
13 See consecutive issues of Voices, Thomas Moult, ed., T (London: Chapman & Hall Ltd, 1919-1920)
14 Sadleir, p. 226.
15 Ibid., p 117
16 C. Lewis Hind, The Post-Impressionists (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1911)
17 C. Lewis Hind, Art and I (New York, London: John Lane Company, John Lane, 1921), p 139.
18 Sadleir, p 250
19 Ibid., p 383
20 Kramer Archive, Special Collections, Brotherton Library, 1 May 1916
21 See Tate Archives TGA8221/2
22 Ihlee studied at the Slade from 1906-10, had two solo exhibitions at the Carfax Gallery in 1914 and at the Leicester Galleries in 1921, before moving to France.
23 TGA 8221/1/1-2.
24 TGA 8221/5.
25 JEAS archive, University of Southampton Special Collections GB 738 MS 135 (1896-1950), 55 boxes, volumes, 2 index boxes.
26 With a greatly expanded committee, its imposing letterhead was filled with the names of the great and the good drawn from assimilated Anglo-Jewry (Rothschild, Sebag Montefiore, Sassoon, Waley-Cohen, Rt Hon Herbert Samuel MP, The Very Rev The Chief Rabbi, Sir Isidore Spielmann KCMG et al). 27JEAS archive, 6 December 1909
28 Ibid., 18 November 1909
29 Jewish World, 15 April 1914
30 JEAS correspondence, 15 June 1909.
31 This is a promising Art student who only came over from Russia at the age of 12 [sic] and went to Leeds. He was at school for two years and left when in the 5th standard. He had been for two years at the Leeds School of Arts where he gained a junior Corporation Scholarship. The Headmaster thought very highly indeed of him and reported that he had good prospects in a year or possibly two of winning a Senior Scholarship. Mr Lesser reported that Sir Isidore Spielmann was very favourably impressed with his sketches and had promised to take the opinion of Sir Alfred East RA. A grant of £10 was asked for expenses to enable this student to carry on until he can go on for the Senior Scholarship. A grant of £5 was voted, provided that another £5 was collected in Leeds, and this grant was made subject to the report of a second Artistic expert being satisfactory JEAS archive, MSS135, #2, Ledger p. 320, p. 3 of minutes of a meeting of the Jewish Education Aid Society.
32 JEAS Annual Report,1913-1914, p. 12, JEAS archive
33 JEAS archive, 21 July 1913.
34 Kramer Documents, ed. John Roberts (Valencia, private publication, 1983), 13 March 1920, p. 56.
35 Ibid.,, p. 54.
36 JEAS archive, 21 July 1913
37 Ibid.
38 JEAS archive , 24 July 1913.
39 See Kramer Documents, p. 10.
40 JEAS archive, 7 October 1914.
41 Jewish Chronicle,19 May 1916, p. 20.
42 JEAS archive, 25 November 1916.
43 Jewish Chronicle, 24 November 1916, p. 11.
44 Kramer Documents, 14 August 1917, p. 24
45 Jewish Chronicle, 30 January 1920, p 29
46 Kramer Documents, 6 August 1917, pp. 23-24.
47 Ibid.,, 5 September 1917, p. 27.
48 Charles Marriott and ‘TIS’, Modern Art: a collection of works in modern art (London: colour, 1917), p. 69.
49 https://benuri.org/artworks/1470-jacob-epstein-bust-of-jacob-kramer-1921/
50 TGA 8221.2.153, TSS letter to Sickert, 14 October 1913.
51 See Tom Steele, Alfred Orage and The Leeds Arts Club 1893-1923 (Aldershot: Scolar Press: 1990), p 201.
52 Etchings and Lithographs by Joseph Pennell of the Wonder of Work, exhibition catalogue, Cartright Hall, Bradford, 1913, pp 5-7
53 Ink and watercolour on paper, plate IX in Edward Wadsworth, Arnold Bennett, The Black Country (London: Ovid Press, 1920).
54 Tommy Lamb, TNT Tales (Oxford: B H Blackwell, 1919)
55 Lisa Tickner, Modern Life and Modern Subjects: British Art in the Early Twentieth Century (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art), p. 54
56 Herbert Read Archive, Special Collections, University of Victoria, Canada.
57 The Microcosm, Vol 8.no 3, p 30.
58 Ibid., Vol 9, no, p 15.
59 Ibid., Vol VII, no 1, Spring 1922, p. 15.
60 Herbert Read Archive, Special Collections, University of Victoria, Canada.
61 Private collection, Oxfordshire.
62 Israel Coehn, Shtetl: Jewish Life in Modern Times (Methuen, London, 1914), p.153.
63 Jewish Chronicle, 4 July 1919, p 30
64 Michael Sadleir, p. 335
65 Jewish Chronicle, 16 January 1920, p. 33.
66 Ibid., 21 October,1921, p. 27.
67 Ernest Krausz, Leeds Jewry: Its History and Social Structure (Cambridge: The Jewish Historical Society of England, 1964), p. 19.
68 Jewish Chronicle, 11 November 1921, p 37.
69 Kramer Documents, 1 November 1921, p. 81.
70 https://www.benuricollection.org.uk/search_result.php?item_id=109
71 https://www.benuricollection.org.uk/search_result.php?item_id=105
72 Jewish Chronicle, 14 November 1919, p 30.
73 Ibid.,1 August 1919, p.24.
74 Ibid., 23 January 1920, p. 34.
75 Kramer Documents, 12 December 1919, pp. 50-51.
76 Ibid.
77 Jewish Chronicle, 23 January 1920, p 34.
78 See uncatalogued correspondence, Leeds City Art Gallery archive.
79 Herbert Thomson to Councillor Arthur Willey [20 January 1920], uncatalogued letter, Leeds City Art Gallery archive.
80 James [?] Bedford to Gallery Director, Mr Hand [23 January 1920], uncatalogued letter, Leeds City Art Gallery archive.
81 Walter Harding to Councillor Willey [27 January 1920], uncatalogued letter, Leeds City Art Gallery archive.
82 Councillor Willey to Michael Sadler [19 Feb 1920], uncatalogued letter, Leeds City Art Gallery archive.
83 ‘Two Kramer Pictures’, Jewish Chronicle, 19 December 1919, p. 24.