© Alfred Wolmark estate
British author Israel Zangwill (1864–1926), the son of Eastern-European Jewish immigrants, schooled in Spitalfields, became known as 'the Jewish Dickens' or 'the Dickens of the Ghetto'. His best-known novel 'Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People' (1892) was highly influential and his play 'The Melting Pot' popularised this term to describe the American absorption of multi-national immigrants and was praised by President Roosevelt. This portrait, carried out in Zangwill's penultimate year, was used as a frontispiece to the 14 volume edition of his written works illustrated by Wolmark and published in London in 1925. Zangwill was the first President of the Ben Uri Society from 1921–24 and presided over the 'Grand Public Welcome' given for Glicenstein when he visited England the same year (his bronze of Zangwill was acquired for the Society in 1925). This delicate portrait executed in quick pen strokes shows the author in contemplation characteristic of his likenesses. In 1935 Ben Uri mounted an Israel Zangwill Memorial Exhibition in which this exquisite work was displayed next to 14 illustrations for Zangwill’s work also made by Wolmark in 1925.
