Painted in Vienna. The artist's self portrait is standing to the right of the seated rabbi, looking outwards. The inscription on the Torah scroll says "Donated in memory of our late honored teacher and rabbi Moshe Gottlieb of blessed memory 1878"; it is an epitaph for the artist.
All figures depict people from Gottlieb's early life in Drohobycz. The artist himself appears three times: as an adult wearing a pendant standing to the right of the Torah, as a child at lower left wearing the same pendant, and as a boy at the far right. The woman he courted, Laura Rosenfeld, appears twice: at the top left, standing and holding a closed prayer book, and second from the right on the top row, next to her mother.
What inspires me about this painting is the way it holds both intimacy and social structure within the same frame. I’m drawn to how collective ritual, identity, and belonging are expressed through bodies, space, and silent human interaction.
Maurycy Gottlieb
1937-1939
״Mother with her Dead Son״ is a Pietà bronze sculpture by the artist Käthe Kollwitz which is dedicated to Kollwitz's son Peter, who was killed in action in World War I