Introduction

This chapter introduces Samuel Hirszenberg and his seminal and dramatic works relating to the Jewish experience in eastern Europe. Following in the footsteps of Maurycy Gottlieb, his compatriot, the chapter stresses that Hirszenberg was often relegated to being ‘the painter of the ghetto’, who gave expression in his expansive canvases to the disconcerting side of Jewish life. The chapter also looks at the effort of two Polish scholars—Józef Sandel and Janusz Zagrodzki—to reconstruct Hirszenberg's life and art as part of the Polish cultural landscape, redefining the scope of his artistic achievement. The chapter then explores the twists and turns of Hirszenberg's life, as well as his social and political developments. It offers an insight into the ways in which he, like Gottlieb before him, was deeply embedded in two cultural and artistic worlds—his involvement in the changing nature and predicaments of Jewish life was coupled with a deep attraction to nature and its symbolic meanings. Ultimately, the chapter delves into the inner world of Hirszenberg in the 1880s and early 1890s, as his art evolved in these academies and as he first received some public attention following the appearance of his works in several exhibitions in Poland and Germany.