The Provenance Of Jews

Posted on April 9, 2025 by First.One.Through

In the world of archaeology, there is nothing as prized as finding something in situ, meaning in its original place. The location helps provide archeologists with clues as to the surroundings’ age and usage, who lived in that location and the nature of society. Once an item moves, critical details of the environment are lost forever.

From that moment, the provenance is often a curiosity. Who owned the item and for how long? How did it come to find its way into this collection or that museum and what happened to the artifact over this time? These matters are often used to prove the subject’s authenticity, by tracing it back without interruption to the point of discovery.

When it comes to works of art (rather than archeological finds), provenance is less of a curiosity. Experts and viewers mostly focus on the art itself as well as the artist. The visual and message are the primary matters, not the journey of the art onto a museum’s wall.

Yet there are stories too remarkable to ignore. Sometimes the provenance is as much of the subject as the art itself, even reorienting the very perception of the artwork to modern viewers.

A Dutch Masterwork, As Seen By A Jew, A Nazi And Complicit Government

Consider the painting A River Landscape with a Waterfall (1660) by Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682).

Van Ruisdael was considered among the greatest landscape painters of the Dutch Golden Age. While his peers Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) and Rembrandt (1606-1669) mostly painted people, Van Ruisdael painted scenes of nature.

In A River Landscape with a Waterfall, we see the artist’s work with contrasts. The right side of the painting is illuminated by the setting sun, with a solid house on a hill set under clouds. To the left is dark scene in the shadow of the sun. Broken branches lay on the rocks and a hint of a house protrudes from the standing leafy trees. A barely perceptible person makes his way towards that house before sunset. A stream separates the two sides of the painting with a small waterfall.

This is one of many waterfall paintings by Van Ruisdael during the middle of his life. Of them all, this one is the most serene, with the title’s inclusion of “river” and “waterfall” seemingly an exaggeration of a modest calm landscape.

The story of the painting’s journey to the Phoenix Art Museum where it is exhibited today was anything but calm.

In the mid-1930s, the painting came into the collection of Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940), a Jewish Dutch art dealer who was among the foremost collectors of Old Master works. When the Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Nazi military leader Hermann Göring confiscated Goudstikker’s collection. Over the course of the war, Göring is estimated to have amassed over 4,000 works of art. Most of the art was taken from France, including from the Rothschild family. Goudstikker’s collection made up a sizable part of the non-French collection, as he was partial to landscapes and the Old Masters.

As the war started, Goudstikker fled Holland with his wife and one year old son. They first went to England and then caught a boat to the United States. On the ship to America, Jacques accidentally walked into an open hatch and plummeted to the ground below, dying instantly. His wife and son made it to America without him.

At the end of the war, the Dutch government confiscated the looted Nazi art. Most of the paintings did not find their way back to the rightful owners as there were few notes about the provenance of each work. However, because Goudstikker was a leading arts dealer, he had ledgers with each work, including this Van Ruisdael painting. Despite the clear markings on the back of the painting with Goustikker’s seal, and Goustikker’s wife and family showing records of being the proper owners, the Dutch government would not release the painting to the family until 2002, 57 years later. The family sold the painting in 2007 to a doctor in Phoenix, Arizona who donated it to the Phoenix Art Museum in 2022, where it hangs today.

During World War II, private art collections like Goustikker’s were often seized by the Nazis, while those from public museums were better able to protect the most prized works.

To mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands, the Mauritshuis public art museum in The Hague is having an exhibition until June 29, 2025 called “Facing the Storm – A Museum in Wartime.” It relays the efforts taken by the museum to hide its most valuable art from the Nazis. As described by the museum, “The exhibition will devote attention to the travels of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring during the war. The Mauritshuis had a bombproof ‘art bunker ’ in which it would store all its masterpieces overnight, bringing out a few – including the Girl – during the day…. During the course of the war, the most important works of art were taken to the various ‘National Storage Facilities’, where they remained until the war ended. During this time, the gallery walls at the Mauritshuis were a sorry sight, lined as they were with empty frames.” During some of the public showings during the war, Hitler featured his personal paintings and his book Mein Kampf alongside the museum’s Dutch masters.

*Moving paintings from Dutch museum to hide from Nazi theft and bombings*

There was a split dynamic between public and private museums as well as viewing art during the day and night during the war in Holland. Private collections were seized and public collections were hidden at night. When collections made it to the light of day, they were used as propaganda for Dutch residents and the enjoyment of Nazi officers who were able to walk the streets freely. Empty frames were like the disappeared Jews of Holland, perhaps hidden away like Anne Frank and her family, or shipped to Nazi concentration camps for liquidation.

*Empty frames at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, July 1944*

The background story and provenance of the Van Ruisdael painting is very much part of viewing the painting today. The pastoral scene of light and darkness owned by a Dutch Jewish family on the eve of World War II was seized – and enjoyed – by Nazi criminals. After the defeat of the Nazis, the Dutch government held onto the artwork and would not return it to the Jewish family which had to flea across the ocean to survive the Holocaust, even as the man who owned the painting did not survive.

To view the painting with such knowledge, the stream becomes an ocean which the Goudstikker family crossed to save themselves. They left their open, illuminated and public house on a hill for an unknown future. Indeed, Jacques’ untimely death during the journey is like the broken branches in the foreground of the painting.

The home and art the Goudstikkers left behind became a showcase for Nazi propaganda, like the house on the right side of the painting enjoying the full setting sun and completely exposed to the world. The dark left side of the painting are the works of art and the Jews of Holland who were hidden and transported to death camps, or perhaps they were lucky to leave the war early like the Goudstikkers, attempting to find a new uncertain home across the ocean. And even when they made it safely to the other side, did they get to enjoy their freedom, or were they fighting for their basic rights and property, such as against the Dutch government who would not surrender their art?

A painting made in the 17th century can be understood anew hundreds of years later because of its provenance. Journeys can shape the subject.

That is most certainly true of Jews, especially on Passover.

Passover Seder As Seen By A Guest

It is a tradition for hundreds, if not thousands of years to invite someone to a Passover seder. Inviting a guest unfamiliar with the story of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt over 3,000 years ago – especially for meals that do not have any children present – provides an opportunity to tell the story of the Jewish journey from slavery to freedom, and from Egypt to the Jewish Promised Land.

The seder uses a Haggadah, a standard text used by Jews around the world, which not only discusses the Exodus, but prior generations telling the story of the Exodus on Passover. The seder is both a story FROM 3,000 years ago at the point of origination, as well as the journey of that story over the intervening years until today.

The guest at the seder is not only learning about ancient Jewish history but seeing and hearing the provenance of that history.

A person can read the bible at any time of year to get a clinical understanding of the Exodus from Egypt. However, to sit at a seder is to see the redemption of Jews in a new light, incorporating the journeys they have taken over the centuries.

The story of the Exodus and the journey of Jews for millenia are too remarkable to ignore. Viewing both simultaneously is the magic of Passover, a gift for everyone attending a seder.

When Our History Begins (December 2022)

The Haggadah as Touchstone for Harmony (April 2022)

Prayer of The Common Man, From Ancient Egypt to Modern Israel (January 2021)

The Jews of Jerusalem In Situ (April 2019)

The Beautiful and Bad Images in Barcelona (March 2019)

Delivery of the Fictional Palestinian Keys (May 2015)

Prayer of The Common Man, From Ancient Egypt to Modern Israel

Posted on January 27, 2021 by First.One.Through

In general, the world knows little about the desires and prayers of the common man who lived a few thousand years ago. While archeologists piece together how people lived, the prayers and thoughts of only the most powerful leaders and religious figures have been captured in ancient bas reliefs and religious texts.

There are exceptions. Roughly 3,000 years ago, a group of artisans who decorated the tombs of the kings of Egypt prepared their own modest burial chambers about a kilometer away from the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, in Deir el-Medina.

Sennedjem, the owner of what became known as “tomb 19”, was ensconced for three millennia with his wife, children and grandchildren in that tomb until it was discovered at the end of the 19th century. Unlike the government officials who featured artwork related to their government functions in their tombs, Sennedjem and the other artisans of Deir el-Medina had painted scenes of their family and idealized world.

Sennedjem’s tomb walls and arched ceiling were completely covered in ornate paintings which reflected scenes from the Book of the Dead. The yellow background paint gave the walls the feel of papyrus, the ancient Egyptian paper, and allowed the strong colors of the painted subjects to stand out.

The western wall of the tomb painting included two jackals which guarded the road to eternity along with Sennedjem and his wife, Iyneferty, and several gods. The southern wall featured a banquet with the parents and children of Sennedjem and Iyneferty, while the northern wall showed the mummification process together with text from the Book of the Dead, and an appeal to the god Osiris that the deceased, who led a good life, should be granted passage to paradise.

The eastern wall is the last wall to be “read” in the tomb. On top, two baboons surround the falcon-headed god Horus with a sun and protective cobra over his head, depicting the god of the rising sun. It is meant to convey a prayer for a successful journey to paradise and the beginning of a peaceful eternal life.

Below the tympanum are five rows which highlight that view of paradise.

The East Wall of the tomb of Sennedjem, Deir el-Medina, Egypt

The top register, read from left to right, includes the couple kneeling before five Egyptian gods followed by one of the couple’s sons facing them in a bark (boat) who escorts them to paradise. Another son is seen opening the mouth of the mummified Sennedjem, an important action to help the body survive and enjoy food and drink in the afterlife.

The following four registers show scenes of paradise. First they arrive in the Field of A’aru, the Field of Reeds. Egyptians believed that it is there that all of one’s possessions and family which were lost are returned (think of the death scene in the movie Gladiator). In this after-world, harvesting is as easy as pulling the grains from the ground or using animals to work the land. Blue water envelopes the entire scene (much like the Nile and canals during life), feeding plants, fields and trees. The bottom row features poppies and mandrakes, showcasing plants used in making drugs for sleep and aphrodisiac for love-making (see Genesis 30:14).

Paradise in ancient Egypt was an idealized version of life on Earth, focused on physical pleasures together with one’s spouse.

Shalom of Safed

Shalom Moskovitz (1896-1980) was commonly known as Shalom of Safed. He was an artisan for most of his life, including in watch-making and silver, and took up painting at the age of 55. He mostly painted scenes which were important and close to his heart such as the events of Jewish history, the Bible and the Talmud.

Shalom’s painting “Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem,” is a classic example. Like the Egyptian painting described above, Shalom used a muted old paper-like yellowish background for a story with multiple scenes. The registers were not neatly aligned in rows, and show a number of locations from around Jerusalem and Bethlehem. The borders showcase grains and fruit trees, bringing to mind the sheva mi’nim, the seven species native to Israel: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates.

“Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem” by Shalom of Safed

Shalom replaced the semi-circular Egyptian tympanum which had been used because of the arched ceiling of the burial tomb (and later copied by churches in Europe above their portals) with a few of the notable monuments in Jerusalem’s skyline: the Tomb of Absalom, the Mosque of Omar (Dome of the Rock) and Tower of David. Further down are two gates of the Old City of Jerusalem with the Kotel, the Western Wall in between. To the left is Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem. Other churches, mosques, homes and fields give the painting a calm feeling.

The painting highlights diversity in sharp contrast to the Egyptian tomb which focused on the deceased couple. The people in the painting are assembled in two groups with one in the lower left ascending a hill (and holiness metaphorically) passing graves and the tomb of the Jewish matriarch, Rachel, and the second group to the right praying at the Kotel. All of the men are wearing different hats showing their different backgrounds, but stand together in their prayers. Similarly, the Jewish, Muslim and Christian sites are shown coexisting in harmony. They dwarf the people as opposed to the Egyptian tomb in which the people dominate the scenes.

The people of ancient Egypt worshiped idols and their art showcased those many gods to whom they prayed for an afterlife of physical enjoyment. The Jews of modern Israel pray to an invisible God, and their art reveals an inconsequential physical man before dominant religious monuments with prayers for abstract harmony.