Isidor Kaufmann Biography | Oil Paintings

Isidor Kaufmann was an Austro-Hungarian painter of Jewish subjects. Having devoted his career to genre painting, he traveled throughout Eastern Europe in search of scenes to paint Jewish and often Hasidic life.

Born to Jewish parents in the Kingdom of Hungary (now Romania), Isidor Kaufmann was destined for a merchant's career. He began working at fourteen years of age and when home, he drew in his room. One drawing, The Head of Moses, was put up in his uncle's store, one day a passing art connoisseur saw it and recognizing talent, arranged for Isidor Kaufmann to study art in Budapest.

In 1875, when he was twenty-two, he went to the Landes-Zeichenschule in Budapest, where he stayed for one year. The following year he went to Vienna for more study, but, he was refused admission to the Academy of Fine Arts, instead, he became a pupil of the portrait painter Joseph Matthäus Aigner. He then entered the Malerschule of the Vienna Academy and later became a private pupil of Josef Trenkwald.

Isidor Kaufmann's most noted paintings are about the life of Jews in Poland. Isidor Kaufmann's honors include, the Baron Königswarter Künstler-Preis, the gold medal of the Emperor of Germany for Der Besuch des Rabbi which was bought by Emperor Franz Joseph I, a gold medal at the 1873 International Exhibition at Munich for Der Zweifler, and a medal of the third class at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. One of his most prominent students was Lazar Krestin.

Art Movement: Realism.
Artists Influencing Isidor Kaufmann: Joseph Matthaus Aigner.
He Traveled To Austria, Ukraine, Bulgaria.
Painters Isidor Kaufmann Influenced: Lazar Krestin.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.