Jacob Kramer

Jacob Kramer was born in the small town of Klintsy in 1892, then part of the Russian Empire, into an artistic middle-class Jewish family, who moved to Saint Petersburg shortly after.[1][2] His father, Max, was a painter who had studied at the St Petersburg Fine Art Academy under Ilya Repin, and had become a court painter to Baron Ginsburg. Kramer's mother, Cecilia, was also artistic being a trained singer who was well known for touring a regional network of theatres established by her father, at which she performed traditional Slavic and Hebrew folk songs.[2] He had two sisters.[1]

In the anti-Jewish events following assassination of the Tsar the family, like many Jews decided to leave. The father. Max, was in poor health so would not pass the health checks for admission to the USA, so instead they came to England, arriving in Leeds (which had an established Jewish population) in 1900.[2] After living for a short time in the Leylands they moved to a small house in Beecroft Grove, Leopold Street, Chapeltown.[3]

In 1902, aged only ten, Kramer ran away from his new home in Leeds, taking various jobs in different parts of the north of England, and even going away to sea for six months, being big for his age.[2] During this sojourn away from his family Kramer attended occasional art classes, but his first formal art education was at Leeds School of Art where he had a scholarship from 1907 till 1913.[2] During this time he was also to become involved in the radical modernist organisation the Leeds Arts Club, which introduced him to the ideas of expressionist artists, such as Wassily Kandinsky and the spiritual beliefs that came to underpin his work. Writing to his close friend and fellow Arts Club member Herbert Read in 1918, Kramer stated that when he looked at an object he saw both its physical appearance and its spiritual manifestation. His struggle, he claimed, was to escape the physical appearance and only paint the spiritual form. Such ideas came straight from the expressionist and Theosophical spiritualism that dominated the Leeds Arts Club, and show clearly that Kramer was himself an English Expressionist artist.

With a scholarship from the Jewish Educational Aid Society, Kramer was able to study at the Slade School of Art from 1913 to 1914.[1][2] Here be befriended other leading artists of the day, including Augustus John, David Bomberg and William Roberts, and he was involved in the Vorticist movement led by Roberts and Wyndham Lewis, although was never really a follower of the style. Nonetheless, several of his woodcuts did appear in the Vorticist literary magazine BLAST, and other periodicals including Colour, Rhythm and Art and Letters. In London Kramer rapidly became well known in the hedonistic artistic circles that dominated before the First World War and was to be seen frequently at well-known artistic haunts, including the cabaret-club The Cave of the Golden Calf, The Cafe Royal and The Tour Eiffel.

His first one-man show was in Bradford, and he had several exhibitions in London, as well as Glasgow and Leeds.[2] He also gained a reputation as a portrait artist in addition to his more avant-garde work.[2]

A Study of a Japanese Girl, 1919

Kramer was called up for military service in 1917, serving for two years including in France during the March 1918 campaign.[2] On completion of military service, he returned to Leeds where he became something of a local artistic celebrity.[4] He was naturalised on 16 January 1922.[1]

After the collapse of the Leeds Arts Club in 1923 he had numerous schemes to establish a new artistic meeting place in the city, almost all of which came to nothing. The great exception to this was the informal gathering called the Yorkshire Luncheon Club, which met regularly at Whitelock's public house in Leeds, and invited some of the leading cultural figures of the 1930s, 40s and 50s to Leeds to speak.[2]

He became an established artist, and also taught at the Leeds School of Art.[1] As a portrait painter, his sitters included Mahatma Gandhi and Frederick Delius[1]

Kramer was commissioned to illustrate portions of the Soncino edition of the Bible and Prophets

He died 4 February 1962, unmarried and with no children, and was buried in the Jewish cemetery at Gildersome.[1] A memorial service was held in Leeds City Art Gallery.[2]

In 1968 Leeds School of Art was renamed Jacob Kramer College (it changed the name in 1993 to Leeds College of Art and Design).[2]

His friend Jacob Epstein made a bust of him, copies of which can be found in the Tate in London and at Leeds City Art Gallery.[1] The Tate, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum all hold examples of Kramer's work, but the most extensive collections can be found in Leeds at the Leeds City Art Gallery and Leeds University Art Gallery.

A small selection of personal material belonging to Jacob Kramer was donated to Leeds Central Library by his sister and nephew. The collection contains exhibition catalogues (including one signed by such well-known figures as Herbert Read); books belonging to Jacob; and a selection of photographs, including many of the wider Kramer family.[5]

• David Manson (2006) Jacob Kramer: Creativity and Loss Sansom (Bristol)

• 35 paintings by or after Jacob Kramer at the Art UK site
• Jacob Epstein's bust of Kramer at the Tate
• Reproductions of Kramer's work
• Archival material at Leeds University Library
• Portraits of Jacob Kramer at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• Portraits by Jacob Kramer at the National Portrait Gallery, London.