Alphonse Lévy
Alphonse Lévy · Arts & Literature
Peintre et lithographe de la vie juive d'Alsace et d'Algérie, mémoire visuelle de deux mondes disparus
8 janvier 1843 — 2 février 1918
Marmoutier (Alsace, France) — mort à Alger
Alphonse Lévy is recognized among Jewish contributors to Arts & Literature — Peintre et lithographe de la vie juive d'Alsace et d'Algérie, mémoire visuelle de deux mondes disparus
Origins and early life
Alphonse Lévy was born at Marmoutier in Alsace on 8 January 1843, into a well-off family of observant Jewish merchants who moved to Strasbourg after the anti-Jewish riots that accompanied the revolution of 1848. He studied in Paris under Jean-Léon Gérôme and began publishing satirical drawings in 1865, signing them Saïd; hostile to Napoleon III, he made his name with fierce caricatures in the satirical press and with political drawings during the war of 1870 and the Commune.
Work and career
From about 1876 he turned to the subject that made him: the ordinary life of the Jewish villages of Alsace, drawn from the inside and without either mockery or piety — the horse dealer, the Sabbath table, the old woman at prayer, the schoolroom. He later settled in Algeria and did the same for the Sephardi Jews of the Maghreb, so that his work is a record of two Judaisms at once, rural Ashkenazi and North African.
Recognition
His album of Jewish family scenes, published in 1903, was received coolly in Paris and warmly abroad, and was at first resented by some Jews who found the portraits too frank; the Musée du Luxembourg acquired his work, and he was given a medal at the Universal Exposition of 1900. He died in Algiers on 2 February 1918, and much of what he drew was destroyed a generation later.
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Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_L%C3%A9vy
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Peintre et lithographe de la vie juive d'Alsace et d'Algérie, mémoire visuelle de deux mondes disparus
Source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_L%C3%A9vy