© Alfred Wolmark estate
Wolmark's monumental canvas illustrates the famous line from Robert Browning’s poem ‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’: ‘Let age speak the truth, and give us peace at last'. The artist made two extended trips to his native Poland in 1903-5 and 1905-6 to carry out studies for the painting, basing himself in the University city of Krakow, then a centre of Jewish artistic activity associated with the Jewish national revival. 'The Last Days of Rabbi Ben Ezra' formed the centrepiece of Wolmark's first solo exhibition at the Bruton Galleries in London in 1905, the year of the British ‘Aliens Act’ - designed to stem the tide of Jewish immigrants at source. Its inclusion can been interpreted as an act of cultural identity, in which the artist both asserted and reconciled his Polish, Jewish and English roots – perhaps underlined by the inclusion of a self-portrait in the background centre of the painting.
Purchased in Berlin in April 1911 by Mr. Sally Guggenheim, this iconic painting was taken to the Villa Guggenheim in Switzerland, then passed by descent to the current owner, Eli Guggenheim, hanging for several decades in the family dining room in San Antonio, Texas. From May 1997 through to July 2012 the painting was on loan to the Judaica department in the Jewish Museum, New York. In 2015, marking Ben Uri’s centenary, the Guggenheim family offered the painting on long term loan to the Ben Uri Collection.
